May 21, 2009 03:23 AM UTC

Michael Riley Delivers: Udall Credit Card Reform Story

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• by: Colorado Pols

We did not want the day to end without an acknowledgment of Denver Post reporter Michael Riley’s superb (if belated) story on Sen. Mark Udall’s credit card reform efforts. With the bill now on its way to President Obama’s desk, Udall might finally start to see those long years of thankless effort pay off in future public opinion polls.

Thanks in no small part to the details of Udall’s long involvement with the issue being responsibly reported in the first place–we had to get a little testy with our friends at the Post as the weeks drug on and smaller media outlets all over the state scooped up the local connection to this highly popular bill. We still don’t quite get what was up with ignoring this story well past the point that doing so made any sense, but we’re happy to see they let Riley sit down and do his work in the end. Excerpts follow.

The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a credit-card holders protection act – a version of an idea first introduced in the House more than four years ago by then-Rep. Mark Udall.

The bill that passed the Senate – and which will be reconciled with a House version this week – clamps down on the freedom of banks and credit-card companies to sharply increase rates even on consumers with good credit.

Sen. Udall, a Democrat from Eldorado Springs, hatched the idea in 2005 after watching a staff member’s experience with a credit-card company that boosted his interest rate to 21 percent even though he had never missed a payment…

Investigating the issue with consumer groups, Udall’s staff found the practice was widespread and began crafting legislation at a time when the issue remained on the margins and industry lobbyists held wide sway in Washington.

“The banks were not happy at all about the bill,” said Udall’s spokeswoman, Tara Trujillo. And it languished in committee for two years, bumping up against another rule of legislative politics: Timing is everything.

What’s changed in the past few months is a credit crunch that made banks more cautious, changing fees and rates with little or no notice and hiking interest rates on consumers who in some cases haven’t missed a payment.

In many cases, those banks also were receiving bailout funds from the federal government, and outraged consumers began calling their lawmakers by the tens of thousands.

When he was in the House, Udall agreed to let the bill be introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., because she had the clout to move it out of committee – and it is Maloney who is now getting much of the credit.

In the Senate, Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., could rightfully claim that he had introduced a similar bill shortly before Udall’s House effort, and it’s Dodd and other Banking Committee members who drove the debate there…in terms of his own credit, all Udall can do is remind reporters and voters where much of it started, something he and his staff did often Tuesday.

He spent much of the afternoon in a Senate studio doing radio and television interviews with media throughout Colorado and issued a press release Tuesday that the Senate vote “culminates four years of work.”