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Testimony in Support of Payday Loan Reform: Informational Hearing

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Testimony in Support of Payday Loan Reform: Informational Hearing Testimony in Support of Payday Loan Reform: Informational Hearing House Financial Institutions and Pensions Kansas Catholic Conference: Jeanette Pryor, Policy Specialist Monday, February 17, 2020 Chairman Kelly and Members of the Committee, “In Imitation of Our Master, we Christians are asked to confront the poverty of our brothers and sisters, to touch it, to make it our own and to take practical steps to alleviate it.” (Pope Francis) My name is Jeanette Pryor and I am the Policy Specialist for the Kansas Catholic Conference. I represent the four Catholic Bishops of Kansas and their dioceses. On their behalf, I would like to express our gratitude for this opportunity to offer information concerning financial products sold in Kansas that we believe contribute to destabilization of family financial health and the overall destabilization of the family. The family is the building block and foundation of all human society. It has always been at the heart of the Church’s pastoral mission. For this reason, everything that impacts the spiritual, mental and physical wellbeing of families is of deep concern for the Catholic Bishops of Kansas. Family financial stability has the potential, for better or worse, to deeply impact each of those critical three facets of family life and health. We believe current payday loan industry practices unfairly target the financially vulnerable in times of crisis. For many years, the Catholic Bishops of Kansas have fought this often-lonely campaign to inform legislators and urge them to engage in effective legislative action that would, at least, bring some improvements to this industry. The Kansas Legislator Briefing Book states: “The Kansas Legislature began its review of payday lending during the 1991 Session.” In fact, our State Library contains a hand-typed report prepared for the Committee on Small Loan Interest Rates of the Kansas Legislative Council. If you were to change the dates and add zeros to the amounts in the report, the document could be used in this Hearing. The essential elements of the products, the reasons Kansans availed themselves of these loans and the urgent cry for some reform are identical to those presented to you today. The title of that document is The Loan Shark Problem in Kansas. It concluded that the usury laws in Kansas were completely inadequate to solve the problem of “the indigent population” making use of such loans, not because citizens believed them to be sound, beneficial financial solutions, but because they were desperate. Despite hard labor and frugality, the report states, Kansans ignored horrendous interest rates to pay for a doctor because their spouse was dying, or children were starving when work could not be found. The date on this report is 1935. Evidence of a struggle long pre-dating 1991 is found as well in the State Library newspaper archive. There you can read; Senate Given Bill Affecting “Loan Sharks,” 1945 or Loan Shark Hunt Renewed in Bill Sent into the House, 1949. The 1935 report and newspaper articles identified as key barriers to reform in their day, the difficulty in securing cooperation from lenders and their high degree of influence with lawmakers. We are deeply grateful to the chairs of the Senate Ways and Means and House Financial Institutions and Pensions Committee for breaking through the legislative barrier and giving customers, represented especially by Kansans for Payday Loan Reform, a chance to be heard. We hope the information you receive today serves as the groundwork for cooperation with lenders and effective intervention. .
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