Legislators Push for Final Action on Nevada Payday Loan Bill
Meeting until midnight Friday and returning on Saturday, Nevada lawmakers took final action on dozens of bills, including a hard-fought bill to limit the terms of high-interest payday cash loans.
Many of those bills now move to Gov. Jim Gibbons for his signature, while others still need to have amendments approved by either the Senate or Assembly.
Bills that the two houses have passed with conflicting amendments will move into conference committees in the Legislature’s final full week, starting Monday.
The Senate voted 20-1 to give final approval to AB478, which Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said was needed to close a loophole in the state’s 2005 payday loan law.
Several small faxless payday advance loan companies opposed the law, insisting they were ”installment lenders” who should be regulated differently. Buckley said those companies were ”motivated by greed,” and evaded the law by changing their contracts when the 2005 law took effect. Those changes allowed them to charge interest rates ranging up to 900 percent for over a year.
Under AB478, any company charging more than 40 percent interest on a loan must limit the term of the loan to 35 days. If a borrower can’t pay the loan back after that time, the interest rate must drop to the prime rate plus 10 percent, or 18.25 percent in the current market.