Tighter restrictions are sought on Utah's payday lenders

Here's Jean Ann Fox's analogy about payday lenders: They're like the guy who gets pulled over for speeding and says, "But officer, I can't be doing 80 miles per hour, I've only been on the road for 10 minutes."

Fox, director of consumer protection for the national Consumer Federation of America, has no patience for the payday lending industry's argument that its interest rates aren't usury, averaging the equivalent of 500 percent a year.

Fox was on Utah's Capitol Hill Thursday hoping to convince legislators that payday lending — small consumer loans that typically come due in two weeks at high interest rates — should be more tightly regulated. Utah's current regulations for the industry, she argued, allow practices that lead to a "debt trap" when borrowers can't pay off the debt on time, have to renew the loan so they can pay the interest due, and sometimes end up paying more in interest than the loan was originally worth.

The Legislature will be considering a bill, sponsored by Sen. Ed Mayne, D-West Valley, that will add restrictions to Utah's payday lending law. Among other things, SB76 clarifies that a borrower has until 5 p.m. the day after a loan has been taken out to rescind without penalty and establishes a penalty of up to $1,000 for a lender's failure to comply with the current law.

"Just baby steps," said Laura Polacheck of the Utah office of the AARP, who joined Fox on the hill, along with Linda Hilton of the Coalition of Religious Communities and Kelly Griffith of the Southwest Center for Economic Integrity, who called Utah "the wild West of predatory lending."

Hilton added that the Coalition of Religious Communities does not support another feature of the bill that permits loans to be rolled over for more than 12 weeks.

Mayne, they charged during a lunchtime interview, crafted his bill without talking to them or other consumer advocates. Later, as Fox lobbied the Senate Democratic Caucus, Mayne noted that he welcomed anyone who wants to put forth a different bill "instead of sitting on the sidelines and carping. No one is willing to take this industry and the side industries on," he said, adding that banks and credit unions don't want caps on interest rates.

He added that he has been told that Internet payday loan companies will be hard to regulate, but Fox disagreed. "Any Internet lender doing business in Utah should be subject to Utah laws, if Utah is enforcing the law."

Unlike some states, Utah has no cap on the size or cost of a payday loan, "has no meaningful limits on repeat borrowing" and does not require the kind of reporting that can help regulators and legislators know how the industry is affecting Utah borrowers, Fox said. "So you have to make policies in the dark," she told legislators.