| NCUA on Interra CU
Move on Hicksville Bank
Redacts Complaint Info So
FOIA Appeal Filed
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack FEDERAL
COURT,
Aug 7 – 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). FFW responded,
demanding that NCUA reverse
its determination immediately
and produce Interra-related
records. It was in August
when NCUA partially granted
Inner City Press's FOIA
request for consumer
complaints and merger-related
records — and in the same
production, disclosed its own
internal plans for a rule
change that would make exactly
the kind of transaction under
scrutiny in one of Fair
Finance Watch's active
comments easier to complete
with less public notice.
The complaint
data itself arrived heavily
stripped. Two spreadsheets —
one covering all credit union
complaints from January 2025
through June 2026, another
specifically on Interra Credit
Union — redact the Subject and
Description field of every
single entry, leaving only
category codes: "Credit
Denial," "Billing Dispute,"
"Auto Repossession,"
"Unauthorized Transactions."
What people actually told NCUA
happened to them is gone from
thousands of complaints,
redacted under a
personal-privacy exemption
that, on its face, doesn't
obviously require deleting a
complaint's substance once its
general category is already
disclosed elsewhere in the
same row. Inner City Press has
appealed. FFW, after the
Federal Reserve refused to act
to ensure public access to
Home Mortgage Disclosure Act
data, has commented to
the FDIC and NCUA on the 2024
HMDA data: After Inner City Press raised that, the FDIC fixed the notice to list Interra - and now the comment period runs through July 2. It should be longer - watch this site. 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
support means a lot. As
little as $5 a month helps
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Friday, August 7, 2026
NCUA on Interra CU Move on Hicksville Bank Redacts Complaint Info So FOIA Appeal Filed
