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U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog
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October 17, 2008
Payday Lenders Target Arizona College Students
 In addition to the Presidential and Congressional elections, there are numerous important questions on the ballot (see Ballot Initiative Strategy Center list) around the nation. Two of the most important are in Arizona and Ohio, where predatory payday lenders are spending millions to confuse citizens into supporting their campaigns to continue making triple-digit APR small loans. Yesterday, Arizona PIRG and Arizonans for Responsible Lending issued a release with the lede:
Early findings of a University of Arizona study find that 5 percent of University of Arizona freshmen took out a payday loan last year, as reported by two professors at the University of Arizona’s Norton School of Family and Consumer Science. In Arizona, a law legalizing payday lending that expires in 2010 will continue if the measure passes. We urge a NO vote on Arizona's Proposition 200 to let the bad law expire. According to Arizonans for Responsible Lending, the payday boys spent $4 million on lobbying in all states combined in 2006; they've already spent over $12 million in 2008 in Arizona alone.
In Ohio, the lenders have apparently finally qualified (after a messy signature campaign) their measure that seeks to overturn a recent law criminalizing payday lending. We urge a YES vote on issue 5 in Ohio to sustain the new law capping payday's typical interest rates of 391% APR or more at a reasonable 28%. This new report from Policy Matters Ohio finds that credit counselors oppose payday lending.
Oh, and don't forget, in Arizona, the Consumer Rights League is actually the bad guys. In Ohio, watch out for Ohioans for Financial Freedom. Both groups are among the astroturf fronts created by the industry's national lobby with the nice "hey, neighbor" sounding name, the Community Financial Services Association. They're on the run around the country, but they've still got millions in profits extracted from the pockets of hard-working Americans that they're driving into Ohio and Arizona by the truckload. Ohio and Arizona are critical battlegrounds in the campaign to end predatory lending.
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at October 17, 2008 08:37 AM
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