To keep Oregon from enacting Senate Bill 965b in its current form.

In this letter, the association clarifies what this law will mean for mortgage brokers. Mortgage brokers need surety bonds in order to remain in business.

The Surety and Fidelity Association makes it clear via this document that if Oregon Senate Bill 965 passes the House, and the governor signs it into law, that many small mortgage brokers may simply go out of business. For the predatory lenders, good riddance. For the remaining 3,200+ licensed mortgage brokers in the State of Oregon, this bill simply means that unless they work for a bank or large financial institution, the State of Oregon doesn’t care what happens to them. At best 42 legislatures in the House didn’t care on June 14th when they voted to send it to the Elections, Ethics and Rules carried committee.

Given that 60% of all home loans come through mortgage brokers, the House is smart to investigate this law before bringing to a vote. Possibly because the votes aren’t there?

For the very latest, here’s a helpful snippet from the OAMP:

Some of you, and others within the mortgage industry, have advocated “blasting” all members of the House Rules Committee with as many emails as possible, encouraging them NOT to allow SB 965 to be released from the committee, whether it’s in it’s current form, another amended form or it’s original form (as approved by the Senate).

Though that is our hope, our legislative advocate, John McCulley, feels that “jamming their e-mail in boxes” again at this time could possibly backfire, risking alienating some of those on the committee who are already supporting our position and hardening the opposition of those who don’t. He recommends that we send emails ONLY FROM CONSTITUENTS of the seven members of the committee. Those constituents could be our members, or—preferably—consumers who have benefited from the “non-traditional” programs that are the focus of much of the bill.

This sounds like good advice, and not a delay tactic. If somebody reading this post has statistics or case studies about “non-traditional” programs that provided consumers with tangible results, click on the contact form to the left and send those in.

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