Recordpub.com - Payday lending petitions criticized Group questions campaign tactics

By Marc Kovac

Record-Courier Capital Bureau

COLUMBUS -- Signature gatherers employed by the payday loan industry have misled voters, paid the homeless to sign their petitions and employed other potentially illegal tactics in their efforts to reach the November general election ballot, a group told reporters in Columbus Tuesday.

The Protect HB 545 Committee (online at www.end391.org), which supports law changes formalized by the Ohio Legislature and Gov. Ted Strickland earlier this year, shared audio recordings and recounted interactions members have had with some of the petition circulators.

The bulk, the group said during a press conference, provided incomplete information about the petition process or made false statements, including some who said that the petitions would lower the interest rates payday lenders charge their customers.

"At best, these petition gatherers were uninformed," said Tom Allio, chairman of the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending, the group that has been pushing for tougher regulations of payday storefronts. "At worst, they were careless and misleading. Regardles, their actions are unacceptable and do not serve the best interests of the electorate."

But backers of the petition effort (online at www.Ohioans4FinancialFreedom.com) countered the assertions, stating they would act quickly if presented with evidence of improper signature gathering.

House Bill 545 was signed by the governor in June and is set to take effect in September unless opponents are successful in their ballot effort. Among other provisions, it caps the interest rates charged on payday loans at 28 percent (compared to nearly 400 percent now) and prohibits lenders from adding additional fees, interest or costs.

Opponents have said the bill will devastate the payday loan industry, likely closing locations and costing 6,000-plus Ohioans their jobs. They also have questioned where people strapped for cash and facing emergencies would go for smaller, short-term loans.

Earlier this summer, a group began collecting signatures to place an issue before voters in November repealing the new law.

During Tuesday's press conference, several speakers, including Rep. Bob Hagan, a Democrat from Youngstown, described meetings with several petition circulators who could not answer basic questions about the legislation or who provided false or misleading information about the petition effort.

"They basically were not informed about all the issues that we were informed about, and they were clearly concerned about getting us to sign as quickly as possible so they could move on to get the next signature and the next dollar," said Hagan, lead sponsor of one of the bills that eventually was incorporated into the new law and an outspoken proponent of the changes.

Hagan's son, Jimmy, a sophomore at Oberlin College, recounted similar interactions with signature collectors in downtown Youngstown. "A woman came up to me and said that if I signed this petition, I could lower the interest rates to 28 percent," he said. "And I said, what interest rates? And she said, well, I don't know, but if you sign this petition, you can lower the interest to 28 percent."

He added of the process, "What I saw was a general aura of confusion that has been created by these petitioners and I assume by the payday loan industry. ... The misinformation and the misrepresentation of the facts were actually being mistakenly understood as facts."