Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton appointed Lt. Gov. Tina Smith Wednesday to replace Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) after he announced his resignation last week. CUNA and the Minnesota Credit Union Network look forward to working with her.

The Senate Finance Committee unveiled its tax reform bill Thursday, and similar to the House bill, the credit union tax status is untouched.

In recognition of his decades of service to the credit union movement, the National Credit Union Foundation has named Bill Hampel, retired chief policy officer and economist at CUNA, a 2018 Herb Wegner Memorial Award winner.

The Cooperative Credit Union Association met with each member of its congressional delegations, and attended NCUA's budget briefing and board meeting.  

NCUA posted its proposed 2018-2019 budget Friday, and will accept comments and requests to present at the Oct. 18 budget briefing. CUNA is currently analyzing the materials, which include a proposed operating budget of $298.2 million for 2018.

CUNA filed its lawsuit Wednesday against Equifax, a suit brought in the wake of a data breach resulting in hackers accessing information on 145.5 million consumers and payment card data of more than 200,000 consumers.

CUNA filed a petition Friday with the Federal Communications Commission regarding the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, outlining how it can provide credit unions with regulatory relief from the onerous requirements for communicating with member-owners. In the petition, CUNA proposes two routes for providing credit unions with greater ability to communicate with consumers about information they want and need on their cell phone.

Credit unions scored critical wins Thursday in the House Appropriations Committee’s markup of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2018.

In addition to issuing 2 proposals, the NCUA board finalized 3 rules Friday, and heard an update on the agency’s Enterprise Solutions Modernization program. The final rules involve safe harbor, inflation of penalties and FOIA.

The NCUA filed a response to the lawsuit against its final field-of-membership rule brought by the American Bankers Association. CUNA is tracking the lawsuit, and plans to support the NCUA in its defense of the rule.