Reader speaks out against Payday Lenders
Posted by Stephen on February 11, 2007
Op-ed by Ward R. Scull, III
When the Virginia House of Delegates voted bi-partisanly, 55 to 39, to cap the interest rate on payday loans at 72% APR, Delegate R. Lee Ware, Jr., a Republican from Powhatan pulled his bill, so that no further debate would continue in the public square on HB2563.
If Delegate Ware’s disrespect for the public and for his own colleagues in the General Assembly was not enough, the gentleman further confounds the people and his political party when he comments on the 72% APR cap and says, “You can’t make payroll on that kind of return.” Since when does the Virginia legislature have the responsibility of being the “nanny” for businesses and have the responsibility of underwriting the payrolls of the payday loan industry, an industry that seems to be behaving like a classic cartel without the benefit of a regulatory ratemaking process by the State Corporation Commission?
From this businessman’s perspective, proudly operating in a pro business state, the General Assembly has absolutely no business promoting and promulgating usury and assisting a morally bankrupt industry in meeting its payroll.
The unfettered payday loan interest charge is a kin to the long-abandoned system of tenant farmers and the company store that created a class of indentured servants. We wouldn’t endorse that system, and we shouldn’t support its modern day equivalent.
It is time for our legislators to unshackle the “chains of debt” forged by the payday loan industry, institute a rate cap, and implement a rate making process.
Ward R. Scull, III
Virginia Transfer & Storage Co.
Newport News, Virginia
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