PACB Letter to Secretary PA Department of Banking

September 23, 2004

The Honorable William Schenck
Secretary
Department of Banking
16th Floor, 333 Market St.
Harrisburg, PA 17101

Dear Bill:

On behalf of PACB’s Executive Committee and our Legislative Chair, I am writing to thank you for the time you took out of your busy schedule to meet with us this week.

We believe the meeting was very positive and appreciated the information you provided on the Monroe County Mortgage Foreclosure Study, the Statewide Study on Mortgage Foreclosures, and our discussion on how best to address these issues. We were heartened and reassured by your indications that community bankers are not the problem and we reiterate our interest in being part of the dialogue you plan to develop potential solutions.

We also want to reaffirm our opposition to the package of bills introduced by Sen. Jane Orie apparently on behalf of ACORN and other community groups. We have informally discussed this package of bills with the Chairman of the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee, Gib Armstrong, and will be formally advising him of our opposition as well. We are not of the belief that more legislation is necessary but support efforts to provide better education of consumers and more stringent enforcement of the state and federal laws already on the books to deal with unscrupulous lenders. Moreover, as we discussed, this problem is far more complex and also clearly involves unscrupulous developers, appraisers and has a tax authority component as well since many foreclosures arise as a result of actions due to tax delinquencies.

Again, thanks so much for meeting with us and we look forward to working with you and your team as these issues progress.

Sincerely,

Frank A. Pinto
President/CEO

Cc: PACB Executive Committee
     Legislative Chair Ronald Frey
     Shumaker Williams, P.C.