| NCUA Thumbs Nose at
FOIA on Interra CU Move on
Hicksville Bank Protested by
Many
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack FEDERAL
COURT,
June 9 – Interra Credit Union
proposes to expand in Ohio by
buying up The Hickville Bank.
Many are opposing it; some
have contacted Fair Finance
Watch and Inner City Press. On June 6 Inner
City Press submitted a FOIA
request to NCUA, the National
Credit Union Administration,
for the application and
related documents. On June 9, NCUA
wrote back that " Before your
request can be considered
"received" certain information
must be included in the
request. Your request is
missing the following required
information: A
reasonable description of the
records you seek."
Really? Then
the threat, by seemingly
lawless NCUA: "provide the
required information by June
16. If no response is received
by this date, NCUA will assume
you no longer seek information
and will take no further
action on the request." But the
request named a specific
credit union — Interra Credit
Union of Goshen, Indiana. It
identified a specific pending
transaction — the acquisition
of The Hickville Bank. It
provided a specific time frame
— records since January 1,
2020. It listed specific
categories — merger
application records, HMDA fair
lending review, consumer
complaints, and inter-agency
communications. NCUA says that
is not specific enough. Courts have held
for decades that a FOIA
request is reasonably
described if it enables a
professional agency employee
to locate the records with
reasonable effort. Yeager v.
DEA, 678 F.2d 315, 326 (D.C.
Cir. 1982). A request for
NCUA's own file on a specific
pending merger application is
not a needle in a haystack —
it is the most basic record a
federal financial regulator
maintains. The timing is not
coincidental. Interra Credit
Union's application to acquire
The Hickville Bank has a
public comment deadline of
June 27, 2026 at the FDIC.
Fair Finance Watch has already
commented to the FDIC,
documenting that Interra in
Indiana in 2024 made 1,003
mortgage loans to white
applicants while making only
one loan to an African
American applicant and denying
five. That ratio — 99.9% of
approvals going to white
applicants — is, as FFW noted,
disqualifying by itself.
NCUA's refusal to even receive
the FOIA request ensures that
its own records about
Interra's fair lending
history, examination results,
and any consumer complaints
will not be produced before
the comment period expires.
That seems to be NCUA's point. FFW has responded
today, demanding that NCUA
reverse its determination
immediately and produce
Interra-related records.
Stonewalling a FOIA request on
a contested application — one
that could let a racially
discriminatory credit union
expand into a new state — is
not a technicality. It is a
failure of public
accountability. Inner City
Press and Fair Finance Watch
will not rest on this. FFW, after the
Federal Reserve refused to act
to ensure public access to
Home Mortgage Disclosure Act
data, has commented to
the FDIC on the 2024 HMDA
data: Fair Finance Watch, which has commented to the FDIC that its lawless decision to eliminate public notice of branch applications violates the CRA, noting the FDIC's rationale that it receives few public comments, hereby timely informs the FDIC of this: Interra in Indiana in 2024 made 1003 mortgage loans to whites, with 220 denial to whites. By contrast it made only ONE loan to an African American, while denying five African Americans. This by itself is disqualifying. Of course, there are many other grounds and sources of opposition... We will be submitting more comments before the stated June 27 expiration of the comment period. As stated above, this must be extended. FFW notes in the
FDIC's pending proposal RIN
3064-AG10: "the FDIC has
received a limited number of
public comments in response to
subpart C applications....
Therefore, the FDIC is
proposing to eliminate the
public notice and related
public comment period from
subpart C and to make
conforming changes to subpart
A of 12 CFR part 303 of the
FDIC Rules." See,
e.g., American Banker, Sept
10, 2025, "The FDIC is taking
the 'community' out of CRA
enforcement," by Matthew R.
Lee, https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/the-fdic-is-undercutting-a-key-element-of-the-cra
The Community
Reinvestment Act specifies
that "the appropriate Federal
financial supervisory agency
shall (1) assess the
institution's record of
meeting the credit needs of
its entire community,
including low- and
moderate-income neighborhoods,
consistent with the safe and
sound operation of such
institution; and (2) take such
record into account in its
evaluation of an application
for a deposit facility by such
institution."
That is, the only enforcement
mechanism of CRA is its
consideration on applications
for deposit facilities:
branches, and proposed mergers
like this one. But now
the FDIC has blithely
eliminated public notice and
public comment on banks'
proposals to expand. The
above-quoted reasoning is that
few comments are filed. So,
that is now changing. This
comment period should be
extended, evidentiary hearings
should be held; and on the
current record, the
application should not be
approved. Your
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