“No Wonder We All Are Bored with NCUA Board Meetings”

This week I asked my good friend Randy Karnes for his perspective  on the upcoming NCUA board meeting (12/16/21). Here’s what he had to say:

Chip hoped that I might inspire the NCUA board to consider its agenda differently; to move away from the agenda’s details and towards activities that would craft a new expectation for us all.   

NCUA and its governance needs to focus on bigger issues. Issues that inspired owners. Issues that made business fun for those who derive  meaning from their efforts. Issues that extended value so that the everyday owners, and professionals reporting to them, would care about board meetings and NCUA’s  oversight functions.

He hoped the three politically selected directors would consider that we need more from the regulator.  We want a group that cares about our professions, our ideas for governance,  and our safety nets.  That the credit union-funded institutions at NCUA are still there to back our plays, our efforts, and our belief in the work ahead.

So I read Chip’s 12/13 blog as the inspiration for my comments, but only found the inspiration to declare I understand why no one gives a sh*t anymore.

Here’s what we’re looking at for Thursday; an agenda that claims we should be paying attention:  Got to wonder?

Multiple issues with the RBC/CCULR capital regulation, a topic of great concern that will affect the CU industry for years to come – a bureaucratic press headline and a staff that cries wolf.

1. 1. Lots of numbers (NCUA/FDIC) – far from any consequence for those locally looking for numbers that will sustain them.
   2. CU’s have already maintained enough dollars for last few “so called crises” – but who would waste a crisis yet to come?
   3. Is it credit unions  or the NCUA Board  who is focused on “change for change” to their own ends – we see no need for any capital change.
   4. Why trust their “ends” at all, no wonder we all are bored with NCUA board meetings, they are not for us and we hear no mention of us in their words or declarations.
   5. More reg burden for the sake of burden. Another option for NCUA to leverage their situational control of our members’ futures. These new tools are ineffective and simply clutter other work that screams for action.
   6. Confusing stats for the sake of stats, oil and water displays, confusion just to take our eyes off the ball – member value.
   7. Member faith in NCUA thinking is muddled by over wrought academic complexity.  No workman’s simplicity in this group, that would take experience; a care for the work.

Now shift to the budget item.

The next budget is just another edition off  an assembly line of budgets – cranking out ugly babies with no mirrors in sight. More spending wanted, when less would send a message of hope and clarity.

1. 1. Planners who expect a rising  curve of more money in this to the next year, to every year – void of awareness from past exploits or value adds.
   2. More people to pad our importance, to enhance processes now un-manned, and with no plans for when needed. We need more people without recognizing there are none to be had.
   3. The budget is not about the flow of our industry and the requirements for its sustainability.  It is simply to ensure the NCUA outlasts its ward, that the NCUA is the last group standing.
   4. The industry’s funds are always there to direct, and NCUA will always be  quicker, slicker, and quietly positioned to direct those funds from members’ activities to a bureaucratic engine fueled by money.
   5. Just give us more, we are hungry.

These are the “minutes” for the 12/16 NCUA Board meeting,  ahead of time, a template of expectations from a bored audience of the industry’s CU members – customer-owners who wonder why the value of ownership has lost its punch.

But the funny thing is we all really do still give a sh*t! We are hungry to believe, follow, and to give homage to the NCUA’s efforts if they would simply find the heart to sell us that they still have the will to deliver value to our members. The heart to simply believe in the work of cooperatives. The heart to inspire us with the simplicity of a local community’s effort to lift itself up by work well done.

I know that Chip wants me to declare that 12/16 is a day for us to rally our voices and take on these tactics from the agenda – to shout we give a damn about RBC/CCULR or the board’s broken budget processes, but I can’t.

The only goal I have for the NCUA’s board and bureaucrats is to work harder, and work smarter to bring back those days when we waited in earnest to read the press reports of an NCUA board meeting. To read the reports ready to smile with the effort and the intent that made us believe we had a valuable ally for our futures.

It’s not that America has given up on its institutions that ensure our success; rather we simply forgot how to promote  leaders for these institutions whose roles are to guard and foster our efforts. We need to change how NCUA board members rise to the occasions ahead.

Too many times these directors have started out as lame ducks….and it has nothing to do with their terms. Lame work is becoming the standard.

Tell Me Why I’m Wrong.