Month: October 2020

Introducing a Quick Guide to LSC Funding & Regulatory Advocacy

Posted on by Kate Muñoz

 

Introducing a Quick Guide to LSC Funding & Regulatory Advocacy

 Read the Quick Guide 

Despite restrictions on lobbying, advocates at Legal Services Corporation (LSC)-funded organizations can participate in regulatory advocacy. Whether responding to a request for comment or providing information to agencies about the impact of agency practices on client communities, LSC-funded advocates can and should work with federal and state agencies on behalf of the marginalized communities they serve.

Even using LSC-funds, advocates may inform government agencies about the challenges client communities face and the impact of the rules government agencies issue on client communities.  LSC regulations permit advocacy with agencies, using LSC funds, regarding “agency practices” and the needs of client communities. LSC-funded organizations using non-LSC funds can respond to notices of proposed rulemakings and written requests for information, even making specific recommendations and stating support or opposition to the rule, if consistent with the request for comment. The hard do nots are limited and clear: do not solicit requests for testimony or analysis; do not solicit requests for participation in a negotiated rulemaking; do not attempt to influence a rulemaking or state what an agency should or should not do outside of the scope of a written request or request for comment.

CRREA Project Recommendations

Our general recommendations for LSC-funded entities largely mirror those we would give to any advocate:

  • Check what the comment asks for in deciding what you want to answer, and make clear how your information is responsive to the request. Even aside from LSC-restrictions, the agency only has to consider information that is responsive to its request.
  • Lead with facts, examples, and information rather than opinions or arguments. These are more likely to be persuasive, as well as more likely to be within the LSC regulations.
  • Tie your comments to the individual clients and specific client communities you work with. Their needs, their experiences, and their concerns should guide your comment. Be concrete. Who is affected and how? What is the scope of the impact? How many people are affected?

We’ll be talking more about these questions and other regulatory advocacy strategies at the National Consumer Law Center’s upcoming  Consumer Rights Litigation Conference this November 9-20. Registration is open until November 5.

As always, LSC-funded programs and their executive directors will want to make decisions about whether and how to engage in regulatory advocacy on the basis of all the facts and circumstances. Christopher Buerger at National Legal Aid and Defenders was an invaluable partner in creating this resource and stands ready to consult further about the details of compliance with LSC regulations. Please reach out to him if you want help in deciding whether your particular course of regulatory advocacy is within the parameters of the LSC regulations or not.

We also thank Carla Sanchez-Adams, Lorray Brown, Salena Copeland, Jane Flanagan, and Rebecca Holland for their review and guidance.

Sarah and Diane

 

CRREA Project Is Recruiting for Law Student Interns

Posted on by Kate Muñoz

 

CRREA Project Is Recruiting for Law Student Interns

Download our Recruitment Flyer 

CRREA Project is seeking interns for the Spring 2021 semester.  Will you help us get the word out?

CRREA Project has relied on law student interns since the day we launched this site.  Law students draft our regulatory advocacy materials, they conduct research that informs our reports on CFPB, and they gather input and feedback about CRREA Project materials by interviewing and engaging with all types of experts and stakeholders.  The contributions made by law students to CRREA Project cannot be overstated.

Internship Experience

We do our best to make the experience enjoyable and valuable for our students.   We endeavor to offer students flexibility to work on what they are passionate about.  We can tailor the experience to what a student needs most given their stage in law school and their career path.  Whether a student needs to leave this internship with a writing sample, a few professional contacts, or more subject matter expertise in a particular area, we work with students on their professional development goals.

The internship is fully remote, and the work schedule is determined by the student’s availability.  We have worked successfully with students in a range of time zones.

Qualifications and Preference Criteria

CRREA Project is seeking law student candidates with: (1) demonstrated interest or experience in public policy and government and (2) experience with plain language writing for a mass audience. 

We prefer to work with students who can obtain academic credit or a stipend through their law school for this experience, and who are generally available for 10+ hours per week.

How to Apply

Students should send a cover letter and resume to diane@crreaproject.org and kate@crreaproject.org.  Applicants are encouraged to apply by November 6.

Questions or Suggestions

Contact Us with any questions, and also let us know if you have any suggestions about law schools we can contact who may have particular interest in supporting their students to intern with CRREA Project.

Thanks for your help!

Diane and Kate

Introducing the Regulatory Advocacy Glossary

Posted on by Kate Muñoz

 

Introducing the Regulatory Advocacy Glossary;

Examples of Acronyms in Action 

You may find the glossary useful if you have questions about the nuts and bolts of setting up a meeting with an agency. Or the difference between an NPRM and ANPRM. Or what all these acronyms even stand for!

As we’ve developed the resources on this site, we’ve received questions about some of the terms we use to describe regulatory advocacy. We’ve created a glossary  to explain what we mean (and we link to it on the Quick Guide to Regulatory Advocacy). 

You may find the glossary useful if you have questions about the nuts and bolts of setting up a meeting with an agency. Or the difference between an NPRM and  ANPRM. Or what all these acronyms even stand for!

This glossary is a living document. As we identify new terms that need clarification, we’ll be working to add them. Please reach out if you think of something you’d like to see added to the glossary or you see something we’ve gotten wrong.

Why Should I Care About SBREFA?

The glossary explains why SBREFA (Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act) shows up in the pre-rule stage along with the more familiar RFI (request for information) or ANPRM (advanced notice of proposed rulemaking). The Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) requires the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) to take certain steps before issuing a rule that is likely to have a significant impact on a substantial number of small businesses.  Those steps include preparing materials about the proposal and reviewing those materials with a panel of small business representatives. After the panel review, a report on the panel’s recommendations is made public. The panel report must be made public, usually in conjunction with the release of the proposal.

These three agencies differ in what they make public when, but all three have mechanisms that allow for some public review of the agencies’ thinking at this pre-rule stage. Engagement at the pre-rule stage is particularly powerful and can help shape the proposal. Advocates can engage during the SBREFA process even if they don’t represent small businesses, whether by reviewing SBREFA panel materials, listening to the SBREFA panel meetings, or asking questions of the agency about the SBREFA process and opportunities for public engagement. The panel report can provide a particularly clear roadmap to likely business opposition to the rule.

An Example:  Do You Care About Financial Inclusion?  Comment by December 14th!

Right now, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is preparing for a SBREFA panel later this month  on its implementation of Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act. It has published both the outline of the proposed rule it is providing to the SBREFA panel and a  high-level summary of that outline, along with other materials. Anyone can review them and comment on them. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) has already published an initial summary of the outline, headlined, “ A Step in the Right Direction, But Improvements Needed.”

This rulemaking has particular significance for our historical moment. Small business development can buffer Black and Brown communities against discrimination and serve to build wealth in the face of centuries of financial exclusion, but only if credit is available on non-discriminatory terms. Entrepreneurs of color are often discouraged from even applying for a loan. One study on the Paycheck Protection Program, using matched-pair testers, found that none of the tested banks encouraged any of the Black female testers to apply for a Paycheck Protection Program loan.\

Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act: Making Visible Racial and Gender Discrimination in Small Business Lending

Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act was meant to make visible the discrimination against small business owners based on gender or race. Section 1071 requires financial institutions to collect data on application for credit from women-owned, minority-owned, and small businesses. It also requires annual reporting to the CFPB. This data would let us see where and how discrimination is occurring. Data would help us fashion a remedy and hold discriminatory actors to account.   

The outline contains proposals the CFPB is considering to implement Section 1071, many of which could significantly impact its efficacy in protecting business owners from racial or gender discrimination. For instance, while the definition of a covered lender under 1071 is relatively broad and inclusive, the CFPB is considering exempting financial institutions “from any collection and reporting requirements based on either or both a size-based and/or activity-based threshold.” Should we be concerned about predatory behaviors by smaller lenders? What evidence do you have either way to raise to the CFPB?  

The comments submitted on the outline, as well as comments from the small business representatives at the panel, will form part of the rulemaking record.  They will influence what rule the CFPB proposes.

Conclusion

We hope this detour has helped make clear some of the power regulatory advocacy has for racial and economic justice.  The glossary is just one of our tools to help with making your regulatory advocacy easier and more effective.  Please check out all our regulatory advocacy tools and let us know what you think.

 

– Sarah and Diane

Taking Stock at CRREA Project

Posted on by Kate Muñoz

 

Taking Stock at CRREA Project

Whether you have just found us, or you have been with us since the beginning, we invite you to take stock with us of all of our regulatory advocacy materials.  Let us know how we can improve, and what you think we should do next!

With the release of the Regulatory Advocacy Quick Guide, our one page mapping tool for regulatory advocacy, we wanted to stop a minute and take stock of our first three months at CRREA Project and to share our upcoming plans.

Regulatory Advocacy Materials

Under Regulatory Advocacy Materials, we now have up:

Taken together, these materials walk you through how to engage in everything from commenting on a rule to developing a multi-pronged regulatory advocacy strategy focusing on the issues core to you and your community.  They are also, as far as we know, unique in their focus on practical tips geared to busy people.  Both Decoding the Unified Agenda: A Guide for Advocates and Decoding the Unified Agenda: A Guide for Advocates are focused on helping you translate what you know into the language of regulators.

We’ve also got a few short videos (40 seconds to just over two minutes) up on a You Tube channel of Diane earnestly explaining our core philosophy at CRREA Project.  Simply by telling our stories, conveying to regulators what we already know, we have great untapped power to change the rules that do so much to shape the possibilities in our lives and in our communities.  Some of you may have seen them on Twitter or watched them in a training.    

We expect we’ll have a longer guide on effective commenting up in the next few weeks, and there are other materials in the pipeline.  With any of these materials, we encourage you to use them, share them, and let us know how we can improve.  Our goal is to help you do more effective advocacy on behalf of racial and economic justice; we can only do that if you let us know what works and what doesn’t.  If you have been a fan of our work, consider signing up for our newsletter, using the application on our blog.

We’ve done a few trainings so far and are looking forward to our three-session extravaganza at the NCLC Consumer Rights and Litigation conference this November.  With NCLC, we are hosting a session on why and how to do regulatory advocacy, a Q&A on regulatory advocacy with former CFPB officials, and a strategy summit on economic justice regulatory advocacy.

CFPB Specific Materials

The website also has CFPB specific materials, including a  list of every regulatory action the CFPB has taken since the beginning of COVID, updated through September 15, and our rating as to whether the regulatory action was consumer-protective or advanced fair lending.  We’re in the middle of a  blog series now that is exploring the question of what the Dodd-Frank Act said about centering the voices of marginalized communities at the CFPB, what the CFPB did, and what more we can do to make sure the voices of marginalized communities are centered at the CFPB.  If we want racial justice, we have to listen to what marginalized communities have to say, and we have to act on that information. 

The need to listen to and act on the experiences and views of marginalized communities was apparent in the wake of the subprime foreclosure crisis and the Great Recession when the Dodd-Frank Act was passed.  The disparate impact of COVID-19 on Black and Brown communities, as well as Native American and immigrant communities, in terms of health, mortality, and financial well-being, has only made the need for the CFPB to center the voices of marginalized communities more evident and more pressing.

Kate and I are very grateful that we’ve been able to work so closely with Sarah Brandon, Travis Doyle, and Nikka Pascador.  Each of them has offered amazing contributions and helped us re-imagine this work.  We also couldn’t have done it without all the people who’ve been so generous with their time in reviewing materials and encouraging us.  Thank you.  We’re looking forward to seeing what the coming months bring.

 

Diane and Kate