Mo. groups focus on payday loans, minimum wage
Two Missouri organizations are working together to push ballot
measures seeking to cap payday loan interest rates and increase the
state minimum wage.
Missourians for Responsible Lending and Give Missourians A Raise
kicked off the two initiative petition campaigns at a joint event
Saturday at the Boone County Commission Chambers. The group Grass
Roots Organizing put on the event.
“We don’t want to compete,” Grass Roots Organizing Director
Robin Acree told the Columbia Missourian. “We want to combine.”
The Columbia Daily Tribune reported that volunteers participated
in training and immediately began canvassing for signatures. Each
petition drive needs to collect roughly 105,000 valid signatures
from six of the state’s nine congressional districts to appear on
the November ballot.
The Give Missourians A Raise initiative seeks to boost the state
minimum wage by a dollar to $8.25 an hour.
The Missourians for Responsible Lending initiative seeks to cap
the interest, fees and charges for payday, car title and
installment loans at 36 percent. Critics of payday lending have
said the annual interest rates for such loans can exceed 400
percent.
Rep. Mary Still, a Columbia Democrat, told the 70 to 80 people
who attended the kickoff event that they had the power to rein in
“predatory” payday lenders. Still, who for two years has
unsuccessfully sponsored payday loan legislation, said “wealthy
special interests” had influenced the votes of too many
legislators.
The crowd chanted “Beat back the shark attack, we’re gonna beat,
beat back the shark attack.”
But opponents of the measure argue the proposal would make it
harder for some Missourians to get credit and have raised more than
$500,000 to campaign against it. Missourians for Equal Credit
Opportunity received a $250,000 contribution from Missourians for
Responsible Government, while Stand Up Missouri _ comprised mostly
of payday and short-term loan companies _ has reported $281,000 in
receipts to the Missouri Ethics Commission.
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