Friday, April 4, 2008
News The Senate does good, then bad
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 10:09 PM
A little while ago, the Senate passed a relatively unmolested version of HB 130, a consumer-protection bill that would allow reg'lar folks to place a "freeze" on the selling of their credit information.
The idea here is to empower consumers to stop identity thieves from taking out loans in their names. For instance, if someone pretending to be Joe Schmoe applies for a Home Depot account, Big Orange would pull a credit report, but the real Mr. Schmoe wouldn't find out about it until he gets a bill in the mail for a new washer and dryer he doesn't own.
Under this bill, Mr. Schmoe can freeze his credit info so it can't be accessed without his permission and he can un-freeze it if he wants to buy something. Needless to say, the Big Three credit-reporting agencies, including home-town boys Equifax, lobbied mightily against the bill. If a credit report is frozen, they can't sell it to anyone who walks through the door.
Originally, Equifax had talked lawmakers into placing a $10 fee – per agency – on a credit freeze, meaning it would cost consumers $30 a pop. In other words, we'd have to pay the agencies not to sell our information. But the final bill whittled that down to $3.
A short time later, the Senate passed HB 977, a flagrant give-away to the insurance industry. The bill, by Rep. Tom Knox, R-Canton, doles out a hefty tax exemption for high-premium insurance plans. Critics contend that these types of plans are often not beneficial to consumers and, even if they were, no additional incentive is needed to promote them. The measure is expected to take another $150 million-plus chunk out of the state's already-falling revenues.
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