Saga of banks, credit unions isn't over

• At an Alta Club luncheon last week, Huntsman campaign adviser Douglas Foxley gave Karras strategist Spencer Stokes an authentic Native American Lakota Sioux Peace Pipe to demonstrate the longtime friends' mutual reconciliation. (In 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan conducted a similar act to obtain approval from former primary opponent President Gerald Ford.) Foxley had supplied Huntsman a copy of the famous threatening voice mail from Stokes. Religious convictions prevented both men from using tobacco, so they blew bubbles from the pipe.

Webb: As Frank suggested, I do government relations work for the banking industry and therefore I'm not a detached observer on this matter. This has been a long and bitter battle in Utah, and it's also heating up all over the country. However, we don't have to keep fighting in Utah. Banks and credit unions both play important roles in the state and they can co-exist amicably. Utah lawmakers have wisely enacted some of the best public policy in the country, so the matter is basically settled in Utah, and the banking industry is ready to move on. Now this drama must play out where it really must be decided — at the federal level.

A legislative task force is currently looking at a few needed tweaks to state policy, but with the mega-credit unions switching to federal regulation, this issue has lost much of its relevance at the state level. So why keep fighting? In fact, if the fight continues at the state level, it will really be between taxpaying Utah citizens and the large non-taxpaying credit unions, not between banks and credit unions.

Utah's current policy, approved after lengthy legislative study and debate, with endorsement by the governor, is proper and progressive. A model for the country. It essentially recognizes two classes of credit unions in Utah. The first class is the many small credit unions whose members share a "common bond" and adhere to the original role and mission of credit unions in our society. These credit unions deserve their tax exemption, even though it gives them a big advantage in offering financial services.

The second class is the handful of really enormous credit unions, some of them billion-dollar institutions, that are far larger than most banks in the state. Utah's policy says that these few mega-credit unions that advertise widely, serve virtually everyone, and do almost everything done by tax-paying financial institutions, ought to pay their fair share of education taxes on profits not returned to members. In other words, they should be treated like their competitors, most of whom are far smaller than they are.