Pub. 3 2013 Issue 3

22 www.azbankers.org willingness of any creditor in junior lien position to agree to a short sale, thus drying up that favorable form of deal- ing with troubled loans secured by underwater mortgages. It also would have had a severe chilling effect on home equity lending. The bill died in the Senate, but we expect it to be back next year as well. We were able to affirmatively move important legisla- tion through the process. A key piece of legislation this session related to pooled collateral and the implementation of a pooled collateral system in Arizona. The successful passage of this legislation was the culmination of several years of discussions with stakeholders representing the State Treasurer’s office, counties, and cities. As a result of our policy and lobbying efforts, Arizona banks will soon be able to pool collateral for municipal deposits, and use Federal Home Loan Bank Letters of Credit as an accept- able form of collateral. The program is mandatory for all municipal deposits outside of the City of Phoenix. Unfortunately, two measures we supported were unsuc- cessful due in large part to the rancor among individual legislators and the budget meltdown that brought the ses- sion to a close. HB2210 would have conformed the state’s legal lending limit law to §611 of the Dodd Frank Act to allow state banks to use derivatives and swaps to man- age risk. The other measure, would have applied the 2010 Uniform Law Commission amendments to Article IX of the state’s Uniform Commercial Code dealing with se- cured transactions. These measures will be pursued again through legislative or regulatory means. This legislative session has already come to be described as historic and unprecedented; unfortunately it earned these distinctions because of its contentiousness and volatility. It is our hope that the political bitterness of this session can be put aside and all sides will emerge from this year’s experience having learned some important lessons about governing. Z Q under the copper dome — continued from page 21