Editoral Urges Oregon Legislation to Take Payday Loan Action
By J.J. CameronPayday Loan Writer
A recent editorial in The Oregonian has a message for the state legislature: it is possible to focus on multiple issues at once. While Governor Ted Kulongoski is urging the Legislature to “limit its attention” in an April 20 special session to allocating money for human services and schools, one writer doesn’t understand why it can’t also focus on the issue of payday loan regulations.
Nearly all other states have adopted laws preventing the payday loan industry from preying on vulnerable poor people with short-term payday loans and penalties that combine to create interest rates of more than 500 percent.
But the Oregon Legislature whiffed on this issuesin its last regular session. House Republicans stopped the payday loan legislation. Now groups are gathering petition signatures to put payday loan initiatives on the November ballot.
This should not be that hard. Some Republicans don’t like the restrictions in the payday loan initiative, but polls suggest an overwhelming percentage of Oregonians do.
Oregonians are right. The runaway payday loan industry must be reined in.
How many more people are going to walk out of payday lenders with payday advances they will never pay off? Whatever happens, Oregonians are not going to look back to April 20 and wish that legislators had limited their attention.
