By Frank J. Diekmann
You don’t exactly need a postgraduate degree from the University of Tea Leaves to figure out that several members of the NCUA board think credit unions and their trade associations are being just a wee bit hypocritical in their demands for more “transparency” from the agency when it comes to the budget.
Pot calling the kettle black. Takes one to know one. Take a look in the mirror, why doncha?
Those are the kinds of things that it seems at least two of the NCUA board members are nibbling around the edges of saying when it comes to all the demands by CUNA and NAFCU that the agency divulge even more information about how much money it needs and how it decides to spend it. At its board meeting last week, I was making a note to myself that it was as if the board members were saying “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” when 30 seconds later that’s exactly what Vice Chairman Rick Metsger said about the credit union trade groups and credit unions themselves. So either he beat me to it, or NCUA can monitor media members’ laptops. Probably the latter, which is likely why the agency is budgeting more for technology.
NCUA board members are political appointees and they don’t arrive at their positions without learning to practice the fine art of diplomacy, so here’s what it seems they would like to say but are too diplomatic to do so: “Hey, credit unions and trade groups, how ’bout a little disclosure yourselves.”
'Very Negative Reaction'
In the weeks leading up to, and then in the hours after, the board meeting at which the 2015 budget was voted on, both NAFCU and CUNA were critical of the ongoing growth of the agency’s budget and what they see as a lack of credit union input into the process. Perhaps they are right, and CUToday.info is providing extensive coverage of the budget here. But this is about that goose/gander equation.
Chairman Debbie Matz, for instance, recalled in her remarks during the open board meeting that when she joined NCUA there was talk that credit unions should have to tell their member-owners who they were paying to run their CU, and how much. Credit unions swallowed that proposal like a Listerine martini (a Listerini?)
“Any suggestion that a federal credit union be required to submit 990 forms revealing salaries of top management would be met with a very negative reaction from any CEO,” said Matz, whose salary is publicly available. “And I speak from experience.”
Although he was not a member of the NCUA board at the time, Metsger said his research into the issue of disclosing senior exec pay had found there “was a firestorm of opposition. One trade group wrote, ‘The requirement of disclosure of credit union executive compensation would be a detriment for the credit unions.’ So it appears what is good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander.”
Similarly, Metsger noted that when NCUA hosted its conference for staff it did so in a hotel in which the room rate was below $90 a night. “That’s way lower than any credit union conference I have ever attended,” observed Metsger.
Aloha, Irony
The great irony of expense watching last week was that at the same time CUNA was taking NCUA to task for its budget, the Association of Credit Union League Executives was hosting its annual meeting in Hawaii at the JW Marriott Ihilani Ko Olina Resort and Spa.
I was told there were approximately 150 people from the leagues and CUNA in attendance. It should be noted that not every league made it to the islands, but assuming expenses of $2,000 per person, that’s $300,000 in total expenditures; at $3,000 per person, that’s $450,000 in credit union members’ funds being spent on a meeting that, let’s face it, could have been held at the St. Louis Airport Marriott.
But maybe they didn’t have any rooms available for the ganders.
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief at CUToday.info, and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info.