Editor,

I hope our Senators in Maine vote “yes” on S. 2155, the Economic Growth,  Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act when the Senate debates the bill in the coming days.

This common-sense legislation will go a long way toward giving community financial institutions some needed relief from rules put in place to curb practices that credit unions and community financial  
institutions never engaged in.

Specifically, S. 2155 would grant credit unions parity with banks when making loans for the purchase of one-to-four unit, non-owner occupied residential property loans. These loans are designated real estate loans for banks, but business loans for credit unions.

This means such loans count against the statutory member business lending cap for credit unions. I value the members we serve at York County Federal Credit Union, but I often have to turn them away when they want to finance one of these properties because Congress decided that they would fit in a different loan product than traditional owner-occupied homes.

This doesn’t make sense – but S. 2155 would fix this. It’s common-sense regulation that would help me serve the members that I’ve worked with for over 20 years and I hope it passes.

Laurie Gaudreau

Sanford