Membership Newsletter: July 2012 Edition | San Diego Advances a Local Ordinance to Increase Bank Reinvestment in the Community
“America’s Finest City” is well on its way to becoming the most recent US city with a Responsible Banking Ordinance. On June 27th, San Diego decided to shine a light on banking practices and ask what financial institutions can do to better serve their community. With unanimous approval, the city’s Rule Committee passed a draft measure that would require banks receiving city deposits to submit annual localized data and a two-year Community Reinvestment Plan for the city. The measure will also establish a Community Reinvestment Review Committee.
With this ordinance, San Diego will join a growing list of cities seeking to ensure that banks doing business with a city are responsive to community needs. Similar legislation has passed recently in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, New York, Portland, and Seattle, and ordinances in Cleveland and Philadelphia have been on their books for over a decade.
NCRC is proud of the work our members are doing in San Diego and across the country to ensure that banks rewarded with municipal deposits are truly good stewards of community wealth. In San Diego, this process has had NCRC members and staff working closely with City Council President Anthony Young to draft a statute that benefits the community. The California Reinvestment Coalition, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and the San Diego Reinvestment Task Force have all worked closely with NCRC’s Vice President of Research and Policy Josh Silver and Regional Organizer Ian Keller throughout this process.
If you are interested in discussing what a Responsible Banking Ordinance might accomplish in your community, please contact your NCRC Regional Organizer today.
