WASHINGTON—Former NCUA Chairman Dennis Dollar is pushing back on Sen. Elizabeth Warren's criticism of the agency's deregulation project, arguing the Massachusetts Democrat's concerns have less to do with whether the NCUA is operating with a single board member than with opposition to regulatory relief itself.
Dollar, whose own tenure as chairman included a period in 2001-2002 when NCUA operated with a single board member, said Congress intended for the agency to continue carrying out its statutory responsibilities regardless of vacancies on the board. He also suggested the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Trump v. Slaughter could make one-member federal regulatory boards far more common following future presidential transitions.
As CUToday.info reported, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that President Trump has the constitutional authority to remove Federal Trade Commission commissioners at will, striking down the agency's decades-old statutory job protections and overturning its 1935 Humphrey's Executor precedent.
Dollar said Warren's opposition reflects a longstanding philosophical disagreement over deregulation rather than concerns about the legal authority of a one-member board.
“Senator Warren’s problem with the NCUA deregulation initiatives is inherent in the word ‘deregulation.’ She’s never met a problem that she didn’t think could be solved by a new over-reaching regulation,” stated the principal of Dollar Associates, based in Birmingham, Ala. “And she’s never seen a regulation that, once enacted, she didn’t want to see expanded.”
Dollar said Warren’s problem is not whether the NCUA board is one member, two members or three members.
“Her problem is that the agency is headed by a Republican appointed by President Trump who wanted to remove some duplicative and unnecessary regulations,” he explained. “Senator Warren is a very significant member of the Senate and I respect her for the depth of her convictions. But this is politics, nothing more and nothing less—despite her supposed concern about the possible legitimacy of a one-member NCUA board."
Dollar emphasized that Congress has assigned statutory safety and soundness authority to the NCUA board to ensure the financial viability of the American credit union system through administration of the share insurance fund and to effectively regulate the nation’s approximately 4500 credit unions.
“Congress rightly expects the agency and the NCUA board to carry out its duties fully and without uncertainty as to its authority to do so,” stated Dollar. “Surely Senator Warren, nor any other member of Congress that assigned those duties to NCUA, wants to see the agency paralyzed and unable to fulfill those duties because the board is missing a member or two.”
Dennis Dollar
Dollar pointed out it has been well established through precedent that a one-member NCUA board is still the NCUA board.
“The number of sitting members does not make the board and give it authority, the statute does,” he said. “That statute was passed by Congress of which Senator Warren is now a member. Surely someone who loves regulation as much as she does would not want to see a regulatory agency unable to act because it is lacking a couple of board members, whether it be by presidential removal or they got hit by a bus crossing Duke Street.”
A regulatory agency has to be able to act regardless of board size, Dollar said.
“Senator Warren just doesn’t like the deregulation actions of this one-member board headed by Republican Kyle Hauptman any more than she liked the deregulation actions of the three-member board headed by Republican Rodney Hood,” Dollar contended. “It’s not the size of the board. It’s who is on it that she doesn’t like. I understand that—it’s politics. But that doesn’t change the fact that NCUA has a statutory job to do and Congress should rightly expect the agency to carry out its duties regardless of board size.”
Everyone from Congress to the staff at NCUA to the credit union community itself should begin to expect that the one-member NCUA board is not going to be nearly as rare going forward as it has been up until now, stressed Dollar.
“With the Supreme Court ruling on the Slaughter case enabling a president to remove the members of federal regulatory agency boards at will, it will likely become commonplace that if the other party wins the White House from the incumbent party, all members of federal agency boards appointed by the president of the other party will be removed shortly after Inauguration Day,” he said. “Whether you agree with the Slaughter decision or not is irrelevant, we may well be in the era of one-member boards every four or almost certainly every eight years when the presidency changes hands and parties.”