Oklahoma Bankers Association We make bankers better!
Here we go!
The Second Session of the 60th Oklahoma Legislature officially kicked off at noon on Monday, Feb. 2 with the governor’s State of the State address.
The legislature will run from now until the last Friday in May. We are excited for this year as we hope to get some good legislation passed for our community banks.
When session starts, there will be 5,202 active bills – but we are “only” tracking 546 of those bills that have some relation to the banking industry.
Before we jump into our specific legislation, I wanted to share with you what Gov.Stitt talked about during his address.
Stitt took the podium for his final State of the State address as he is term limited after 2026 with eight years under his belt as our governor. Stitt covered a lot of ground in his talk, thanking multiple folks for their service to the state – including agency heads, judicial members and his family.
Arguably, one of the main messages the governor wanted to get across to the legislature is he wants several issues put on the November ballot in the form of a state question.
Below is the governor’s state question wish list.
Making the state superintendent of public instruction an appointed position instead of being elected.
Amending Article 25-A of the Oklahoma Constitution to loosen the requirement that anyone earning up to 133% of the Federal Poverty Level be eligible for Medicaid.
Implement a 3% annual spending cap on reoccurring spending growth.
Sending Oklahoma’s medical marijuana program back to the voters to – in the governor’s words – “shut it down.”
It will be interesting to watch and see if there is any traction within the legislature on any of these issues. One way you can tell how supportive the legislature will be is when the governor talks about each of these points, do the individual senators and representatives stand and/or clap to show their support. From what I could tell, there were mixed reviews on each item – the one that received the most applause was for shutting down medical marijuana in Oklahoma.
Stitt also mentioned several other things he would like to see accomplished during this session, but he didn’t put as much emphasis on these as the aforementioned issues. I would bet, in some sort of way, we might see the legislature move on some of the following items:
Creating a “Taxpayer Endowment Fund” with $750 million of existing state savings, which he claimed could turn into $3.2 billion in just 20 years, generating sustainable revenue every year.
Directing $12 million toward adding a $250 state contribution to the new federal $1,000 newborn savings account.
Eliminating the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association.
Remove the cap on the Parental Choice Tax Credit.
As I mentioned, the OBA has its own legislation, specifically two pieces.
Here is what each of those bills hopes to accomplish.
HB 3020 would be an additional tool for our bankers to help combat the abundance of fraud that is happening these days. We’ve heard from numerous bankers who have told us they know a customer is being scammed, but there isn’t anything they can do to stop or even slow down a fraudulent transaction. HB 3020 will hopefully give some additional tools to make a dent in the recent wave of fraud. Rep. Mark Lepak is our author, and he is also the chairman of the Banking Committee, so is obviously in strong support of our bill.
HB 3020 will do the following:
Allows banks (voluntary) to place a 10-day business transaction hold if it suspects a protected adult (over 62 or as defined by title 43A) is the victim of financial exploitation occurring, having occurred or being attempted.
Allows the hold to be extended by 10 business days if the bank’s investigation leads to a reasonable belief of financial exploitation or upon the request of law enforcement or APS.
Allows banks to reach out to a trusted contact or other person related to the account.
Provides an exception to the Financial Privacy Act for banks to provide information during an ongoing financial exploitation investigation by APS or law enforcement.
Immunizes banks for their decision to place or not place a hold and to provide or not provide information during an ongoing investigation.
The second bill we are introducing is HB 3244. While our previous bill is designed to help the customer, this one is built to go after those who commit the fraud. We worked closely with the attorney general’s office to make sure we covered as much as we could and make the legislation impactful. We just aren’t really big on the idea of running legislation that doesn’t really accomplish much of anything other than to say we ran a bill.
HB 3244 does three specific things:
First, it expands the definition of pattern of criminal offenses to better encapsulate modern fraud techniques.
Particularly on Section 425 of Title 21, increases penalties for anyone engaging in a pattern of criminal offenses. Current law requires the person to have engaged in criminal offenses in two or more counties in this state. The revised statute will better fit with modern criminal techniques by including criminal offenses committed:
In two or more municipalities in this state.
In a municipality and an unincorporated portion of the same county.
Within the state and outside the state.
Within the state and an act committed online.
Second, it closes a potential charging loophole whereby the criminal exploits a vulnerable or elderly adult or a minor into committing a crime.
Criminals often use coercion, deception, intimidation or other means to exploit vulnerable adults, the elderly or minors into committing crimes on their behalf. This bill makes it a crime to do so.
This allows prosecutors to charge criminals for their actions in causing the crime to be committed by a vulnerable or elderly adult or a minor, even though the criminal did not commit the crime directly.
The bill also enhances the fines and penalties for criminals who engage in a pattern of such exploitation.
Third, it greatly enhances Oklahoma’s identity theft laws.
The bill greatly increases the list of items of other persons, the possession of which with fraudulent intent, is unlawful. Current law lists only a few basic items such as drivers license numbers, social security numbers or account numbers. The amended law would expand that list to include items used by modern criminals, such as:
Security codes, PIN numbers, bank logos, peer-to-peer payment login, usernames and passwords, answers to account security questions, digital credit cards, digital wallet keys, credit history, tribal cards, IMEI phone information, DNA, fingerprints and many other items used by modern criminals to commit identity theft.
The bill prohibits the use of a stolen or synthetic identity or to falsely portray oneself as a business, financial institution or government entity to obtain money, credit or anything of value.
The bill enhances penalties for identify theft, aggravated identity theft and multiple convictions.
The bill increases cooperation among law enforcement agencies, fraud investigators and similarly acting employees at banks, credit unions and other financial institutions.
As you can read, both of these bills are pretty aggressive and will hopefully become law by the end of the legislative session.
While these bills are priority, there are many others we are involved with or keeping a close watch to see how they progress.
Just to take a look at some of them:
HB 3172 — Creates the Fair Banking Act that would prohibit certain financial institutions from discriminating in the provision of covered financial services.
HB 3341 — Removes the tax credit for SBA guaranty fees.
HB 3521 — Creates the Money Transmission Modernization Act, which establishes new standards for money transfers in state.
HB 3549 — Removes provisions providing creditors certain property over assets when obligations exceed the assets on hand.
HB 3921 — Creates the Credit Union reform Act.
HB 4352 — Adjusts provisions related to the Uniform Mortgage Modification Act.
SB 1515 — Same as Chairman Lepak’s banking discrimination bill.
SB 1579 — Expands certain one-time tax credits to the bank privilege tax and insurance taxes.
SB 1623 — Significantly broadens credit union authority by increasing investment limits, expanding membership rules and permitting virtual currency custodian services.
SB 2055 — Eliminates the corporate tax and bank privilege tax for entities owned by U.S. citizens.
You can see that we have a lot on our plate this session, but we look forward to an opportunity to make meaningful change and prevent the bad stuff from going into law.
It’s going to be a fun session as election years always bring out the best in everyone … in one form or another. For example, we will see plenty of legislation presented where the author has no intention of it becoming law – they simply want to be able to use it on the campaign trails. There will also be many votes this year that will be calculated decisions by members since they know everyone is watching every vote and opponents may use it against them down the road.
These tactics are nothing new, they’ve been happening for generations. I will say, though, that it makes for some great entertainment!
We will keep you posted as we journey through this session and make sure you are aware of everything happening at the Capitol that may have an impact on your bank.
Should you have any questions regarding legislation we are tracking or any bill at the Capitol, don’t ever hesitate to reach out.