Pub. 4 2014 Issue 3

4 www.azbankers.org All Hands On Deck By PAUL HICKMAN , President & CEO A MESSAGE FROM THE PRES I DENT R E FLECTING BACK ON THE 2014 ARIZONA LEGISLATIVE SESSION, IT IS A GOOD TIME TO MENTION THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF BANKER ENGAGEMENT. I CONSIDER MAINTAINING A HIGH LEVEL OF GRASSROOTS INVOLVE- ment from our banking community to be one of the most important functions of my job. That means getting the banking community—at all levels of banking—involved in the political process at ALL levels of government. Whether you are a president, CEO, loan officer, teller, security guard, or director—you embody the Arizona banking industry, are a constituent of an Arizona elected official and we at the Arizona Bankers Association need your help. We need you with us when we make the case for the is- sues that greatly impact our industry. We need you with us in Washington, and we need you with us in Arizona. Simply put, the banking community has borne the brunt of a lot of unfair criticism in the last several years and op- portunistic politicians are much less likely to act contrary to our interests if bankers make the case. The professional government relations staff here at the Arizona Bankers Asso- ciation does a fabulous job of expressing the viewpoint of the industry collectively, keeping us abreast of what may be about to happen and even pinpointing where we need to focus our efforts. However, there are times when the collective voice of the industry isn’t enough and that is when we activate our grassroots via call to action alerts. Additionally, I take a group of Arizona bankers to Wash- ington, D. C. several times a year to address the key issues of banking with our congressional delegation. We recently made the case that efforts to expand the business lending cap for credit unions is an abuse of a taxpayer funded corporate sub- sidy and directly threatens our bottom line. No one can make these cases more persuasively and passionately than a banker. As I write this column, I can recall numerous issues that have ended up as wins for Arizona banks due to our treks to D.C. We need engagement at the state level as well. We were able to make huge strides in amending the anti-deficiency stat- ute through aggressive grassroots engagement of legislators this year. We were also able to block the entrance of tax lien lending companies, and we prevented the codification of the federal mortgage servicing rules at the state level. Advocacy is multifaceted. We need all pistons firing from our lobbying machine….to grassroots activism….to engage- ment on the electoral playing field, which is where we’re headed this fall in our mid-term elections. There will be plenty of opportunities to get involved this fall through our Political Action Committee (PAC), par- ticipating in our Washington, D.C. mission in October, or contributing directly to AzBA candidates’ campaigns. The Arizona Bankers Association affiliates with the Ameri- can Bankers Association for our Political Action Committee. This gives us a little more than twice the resources we would otherwise have to contribute to candidates that support the banking industry. Mike Thorell and I presented a check of al- most $13,000 from YOU, our banking industry employees, to the American Banking Association Political Action Commit- tee in Denver this past July. This will translate into roughly $30,000 that we can deploy to help pro-banking candidates get elected this fall. I hope you enjoy this issue, especially the recap of our recent Annual Meeting and Convention in Sedona. It received great reviews for both professional development and personal relationship building. Thank you to everyone that attended and helped make it such a success. We always welcome your feedback and opinion. Keep in touch! w