YOU CAN TREAT YOUR BANKER, IF YOUR MOTIVES ARE GOOD

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 19, 1992                   TAG: 9202190248
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium
YOU CAN TREAT YOUR BANKER, IF YOUR MOTIVES ARE GOOD
Bribing your banker to get a loan is a felony, but if you promise the wine and roses are just for being a great guy, that's OK, the General Assembly essentially said in a bill passed Tuesday.
Opponents say the bill, which needs only Gov. Douglas Wilder's signature to become law, invites the payola and buddy-buddy loan practices that led to the savings-and-loan crisis in the 1980s.
Supporters say it is merely a patch-up of language left out of the law last year.
When the assembly changed this section of law last year, it accidentally left out the words "with the intent to influence" in the part about prohibited gifts, said Walter Ayers of the Virginia Bankers Association. The omission virtually outlawed gifts of any kind to bankers.
Ayers, whose group requested this year's bill, said the law even made it unclear whether banks could pay for work done by a company related to the bank - for example, toilet repairs done by a plumber who also sits on the bank's board of directors.
"This is just placing back in [the law] what was in there to begin with," said Del. Roscoe Reynolds, D-Martinsville, who sponsored the legislation. His bill cleared the House of Delegates unanimously, and on Tuesday the Senate approved it 30-6.
Despite the lopsided vote, the bill provoked the hottest debate of the day, with several senators arguing that the new wording creates a loophole in the law.
"This bill makes it appear that giving the bankers gifts and kind of buttering them up isn't a problem, and I think that's exactly the problem," said Sen. Robert Scott, D-Newport News.
"This is going back to where we were 10 years ago, and it's a major cause of the buddy-buddy loan system" that resulted in defaults and a public bailout of the industry, said Sen. Richard Saslaw, D-Springfield.
"These people ought to be coming in here putting in bills that make them look as pure as they can be," he said.
One senator countered by citing the assembly's own gifts policy: "All we're required to do is disclose the gifts we get, and as long as they're not intended to bribe us to vote a certain way, it's OK. This is the same," said Sen. Robert Calhoun, R-Alexandria.
Comparing bankers to assembly members is not far-fetched, because many of the legislators serve on bank boards. Banks also are one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Richmond. Last year, the industry gave a total of $88,350 to the 30 senators who voted for the bill.
Ayers said he didn't see what the fuss was about.
"I suppose one can argue that [banning all gifts] makes it as clean as it can possibly be, if clean is a problem," he said. "But . . . I don't know of many people giving gifts anyway."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB