Continuing a long-running trend of legislators questioning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) transparency, eight Congressional Republicans expressed concerns about the bureau’s close-hold embargoes in a recent letter addressed to CFPB Director Richard Cordray.
The letter focused on the bureau’s tendency to impose close-hold media embargoes on information released relating to rulemaking and enforcement actions, characterizing the practice as a means of keeping valuable information from reaching the general public.
“Restricting public debate through close-hold media embargoes hampers public input,” the letter states. “The close-hold media embargo may permit the bureau to advance its agenda, by controlling the story, but it also prevents the inclusion of differing views. This embargo constrains the journalists that are privy to this information from providing a story with multiple perspectives that has been properly fact-checked.”
The letter asked Cordray to answer the following questions about its embargoes:
- “1. What is the bureau’s justification for using a ‘close-hold embargo?’ Why is the embargo often lifted at 12:00 a.m.;
- “2. How does such a midnight embargo advance the bureau’s consumer protection mandate?;
- “3. What controls must the bureau adhere to prevent the leaking of sensitive information? Have there been any violations of these controls?;
- “4. Under what circumstances does the bureau believe it would be in violation of law for leaking via close-hold embargo, certain sensitive information such as rulemakings, enforcement actions, studies and prepared remarks?”
This is far from the first time members of Congress have called out the bureau for a purported lack of transparency.
In 2013, Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) introduced a bill to designate an attorney general solely responsible for overseeing the CFPB, which he reintroduced in 2015 with Rep. Tim Waltz (R-Minn.) as a co-author. Also in 2015, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), who President Donald Trump has interviewed as a possible replacement for Cordray, sponsored a bill to restructure the bureau’s leadership into a five-member commission, as has been proposed by multiple policymakers, stating that, “by changing the leadership structure, we can ensure the CFPB is more accountable, transparent and shielded from the whims of political change and partisan politics.”
There was bipartisan support for Rep. Sean Duffy’s (R-Wis.) bill, known as the “Bureau Advisory Commission Transparency Act,” in 2015, when 401 members of Congress voted in favor of a bill that would have subjected the CFPB to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, legally obligating it to open meetings of its advisory board to the public.
The bureau and Cordray have reiterated repeatedly the CFPB’s expressed commitment to transparency about its activities, including in its annual appropriations report released in January 2017.
“In all of its work, the bureau strives to act in ways that are fair, reasonable, and transparent,” the report states,” the report states. “A critical part of making financial markets work is ensuring transparency in those markets. The CFPB believes that it should hold itself to that same standard and strives to be a leader by being transparent with respect to its own activities.”
The report highlights the bureau’s four editions of its Supervisory Highlights from the previous year, including one special edition, as well as its fulfillment of its requirement to report to Congress at least four times per year. Cordray stressed in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal that he has consistently exceeded the annual requirement for reporting to Congress.