Related articles:

Some payday-loan foes drop initiative support

General
A1 Communications
Cable Techs Health Care
Sierra Tucson
Eating Disorders Program Coordinator Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION

We were disappointed to hear that a consumer-advocacy group dropped its support for the Stop Payday Loans ballot initiative authored by state Rep. Marian McClure, R-Tucson.

We still hope, however, that Stop Payday Predators, the advocacy committee chaired by state Sen. Debbie McCune Davis, D-Phoenix, is successful in ridding the state of payday lenders by opposing an industry-backed initiative.

There's an old saying in sports — the best defense is a good offense. In other words, your opponent will have trouble scoring if it is too busy trying to defend you.

The defensive strategy of the Stop Payday Predators committee makes sense from this perspective: Unless the Legislature takes action or the industry's initiative passes, payday loans will become illegal in 2010. That's because the 2000 law that created payday lending has an expiration, or sunset, clause.

It's that sunset clause that has payday lenders worried. They must do something — get the Legislature to rewrite the law or get voters to approve their initiative — or else they will be out of business in about two years.

Stop Payday Loans, in contrast, is an aggressive, offensive measure. The initiative takes the fight to predatory lenders by threatening to repeal the Arizona law that created payday lending and to make it a felony to offer a payday loan.

Payday lenders responded to the McClure initiative by coming up with their own measure — dubiously titled the Payday Loan Reform Act.

We have editorialized in favor of Stop Payday Loans because eradicating the industry by initiative would mean that the Legislature could not make those loans legal again without first getting voter approval.

However, McCune Davis said having two payday-loan initiatives on the ballot could potentially confuse voters.

So instead of supporting one initiative and opposing another, Stop Payday Predators has decided to take a defensive posture. The committee will put all its efforts toward defeating the industry measure with a "vote no" campaign.

We hope it works.

"The industry has created an opportunity for us to get to the endpoint we want and to get there more directly," McCune Davis told us Tuesday.

"Rather than spend time and money gathering signatures, we can take our resources and redirect them with a clear message to voters. A 'vote no' message on the industry initiative is very easy to do."

McClure's initiative isn't dead, but now that McCune Davis' committee has pulled its support, it's going to make it that much harder for McClure and her supporters to gather the 153,365 valid signatures necessary to put the measure on the ballot.

The industry, meanwhile, has enough money to hire petition circulators to gather signatures. Howard Fischer reported in Saturday's Star that payday lenders have contributed nearly $1.6 million to advance the industry's initiative. The largest donation to McCune Davis' committee has been $10,000 from Local 99 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

With the rival initiative in a weakened state, payday lenders can go on the offensive. However, McCune Davis said that if voters reject the Payday Loan Reform Act, that will send a strong message to Legislators that the public doesn't want these kind of lenders in Arizona.

A no vote, she said, would halt repeated legislative efforts to get rid of the law's sunset clause. Opponents of payday lending would then have to bide their time until the law expired.

We are still hopeful that McClure can find a way to get the Stop Payday Loans initiative on the ballot. She told Fischer last week that she will count the signatures already collected before deciding in the next couple of weeks whether to pursue the measure.

McClure's initiative would be the best way, we believe, to rid the state of payday lenders once and for all.

That said, persuading voters to reject the payday industry's initiative would be the next best thing.