On Saturday, Del. Lee Ware‘s Payday Loan Act was amended by the House to include a 72% interest rate cap, which is an interest rate so mind-boggling high as to be presumably unobjectionable to anybody who supports the concept of usury laws. A floor vote was then held on whether it should pass. It failed passed (I don’t know why I wrote “failed” — the vote clearly indicates that it passed, I knew it passed — let’s chalk it up to “dumb”), 55-39.
Below is a list of every member of the house and whether they voted in favor of the 72% interest rate (Y), against it (N), or didn’t vote (NV). Also listed is the amount of money that they have received from the payday lending industry (LoanMax, TitleMax, Check Smart, Advance America, Check Into Cash, Ace Cash Express), using data from VPAP.
| name | district | amount |
| Abbitt Jr, Watkins M | N | $1250 |
| Albo, David B | N | $1500 |
| Alexander, Kenneth C | Y | $2000 |
| Amundson, Kristen | Y | $750 |
| Armstrong, Ward L | N | $2500 |
| Athey, Clifford | Y | $500 |
| BaCote, Mamye | Y | $500 |
| Barlow, William K | Y | $0 |
| Bell, Rob | Y | $1000 |
| Bowling, Dan | N | $0 |
| Brink, Robert H | Y | $500 |
| Bulova, David | Y | $0 |
| Byron, Kathy J | N | $2000 |
| Callahan Jr, Vincent F | N | $2000 |
| Caputo, Chuck | Y | $500 |
| Carrico, Bill | N | $0 |
| Cline, Ben | Y | $0 |
| Cole, Mark | Y | $1000 |
| Cosgrove, John | Y | $0 |
| Cox, M Kirkland | Y | $500 |
| Crockett-Stark, Anne | N | $0 |
| Dance, Rosalyn R | N | $500 |
| Dudley, Allen W | Y | $1000 |
| Ebbin, Adam | Y | $1000 |
| Eisenberg, Albert | Y | $0 |
| Englin, David | NV | $250 |
| Fralin, William H Jr | Y | $0 |
| Frederick, Jeff | NV | $2500 |
| Gear, Thomas D. | Y | $0 |
| Gilbert, Todd | N | $250 |
| Griffith, H Morgan | Y | $13000 |
| Hall, Franklin P | NV | $2500 |
| Hamilton, Phillip A | Y | $2500 |
| Hargrove Sr, Frank D | N | $1500 |
| Hogan, Clarke N | Y | $500 |
| Howell, Algie | Y | $500 |
| Howell, William J | N | $17750 |
| Hugo, Timothy | NV | $2750 |
| Hull, Robert D | Y | $0 |
| Hurt, Robert | N | $250 |
| Iaquinto, Salvatore | Y | $2500 |
| Ingram, Riley Edward | N | $250 |
| Janis, Bill | N | $500 |
| Joannou, Johnny S | Y | $3500 |
| Johnson Jr, Joseph P | Y | $1000 |
| Jones, Chris | N | $750 |
| Jones, Dwight C | Y | $0 |
| Kilgore, Terry G | N | $4500 |
| Landes, R Steven | Y | $1500 |
| Lewis, Lynwood W Jr | Y | $250 |
| Lingamfelter, Scott L | NV | $250 |
| Lohr, Matt | N | $2000 |
| Marsden, David | N | $500 |
| Marshall, Danny | N | $0 |
| Marshall, Robert G | NV | $500 |
| May, Joe T | N | $500 |
| McClellan, Jennifer | Y | $3000 |
| McEachin, A Donald | Y | $1000 |
| McQuigg, Michele | Y | $0 |
| Melvin, Kenneth R | Y | $500 |
| Miller, Jackson | N | $1000 |
| Miller, Paula | Y | $500 |
| Moran, Brian J | Y | $8000 |
| Morgan, Harvey B | Y | $1500 |
| Nixon Jr, Samuel A | N | $2500 |
| Nutter, Dave | Y | $250 |
| O’Bannon, John | Y | $1500 |
| Oder, Glenn | Y | $1000 |
| Orrock, Robert D | Y | $0 |
| Peace, Christopher | Y | $3500 |
| Phillips, Clarence E | N | $0 |
| Plum, Kenneth R | Y | $1000 |
| Poisson, David | N | $500 |
| Purkey, Harry R | N | $1000 |
| Putney, Lacey E | N | $1000 |
| Rapp, Melanie | N | $1000 |
| Reid, John S | N | $250 |
| Rust, Tom | Y | $0 |
| Saxman, Christopher | N | $3269 |
| Scott, Ed | N | $250 |
| Scott, James M | Y | $0 |
| Shannon, Stephen | Y | $750 |
| Sherwood, Beverly J | Y | $250 |
| Shuler, James M | N | $500 |
| Sickles, Mark | N | $1500 |
| Spruill Sr, Lionell | Y | $500 |
| Suit, Terrie | N | $3750 |
| Tata, Robert | N | $1750 |
| Toscano, David J | Y | $250 |
| Tyler, Rosyln | Y | $500 |
| Valentine, Shannon | Y | $250 |
| Waddell, Katherine | Y | $500 |
| Ward, Jeion A | Y | $500 |
| Wardrup Jr, Leo C | N | $1500 |
| Ware, Lee | N | $2500 |
| Ware, Onzlee | N | $500 |
| Watts, Vivian E | Y | $0 |
| Welch, John | Y | $500 |
| Wittman, Robert | Y | $500 |
| Wright, Tommy | N | $0 |
Man, those lobbyists have to be some kind of ticked off at Morgan Griffin and Brian Moran. Contributions of $13,000 and $8,000 and they still voted against them.
If nothing else, this seems to be evidence that campaign contributions don’t always translate to favorable votes.
I’ve been looking for an excuse to throw some data at ManyEyes, so I created a visualization of how the money affected the votes:
http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/view/S4ooTEsOtha6oLE7PErYE2-
The curious thing is that about the same amount of money was spent (roughly 60k) for both yes and no votes. I tried to create a visualization from the data to show a scatter plot of money accepted by politicians on one axis and their vote on another, but I think the “did not vote” variable is preventing it from working. Anyhow, very interesting stuff.
Let us assume that we could get one of those who “took a walk” (Lingamfelter,Frederick,Englin,Marshall,Hugo and Hall) to vote to cap interest at 72%, while the rest remained in hiding and DEMOCRATS: Sickles,Marsden,Shuler,Poisson,Dance, Bowling, Phillips,Dance and Ware actually voted to protect Virginians from usury, the bill would have passed 48-47. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”
Sorry posted Dance twice but counted her only once. So the 9 vote margin still holds.
Nice work, Waldo. I’ll post about this.
Just to be clear — because it’s not, and the legislative history is certainly confusing — the purpose of this vote was to determine whether the bill should be amended to include Del. McClellan’s cap. That amendment passed, despite my mysterious assertion that it failed.
Dang, this stuff can be confusing.
Someone should do a t-test or something to see if there is a statistical difference in this fact:
Average donations from “Yes”: $1,571 (Standard deviation $2,878)
Average donations from “No”: $1,105 (Standard deviation $2,090)
So, higher average and more more variance for Yes. But is it statistically significant? Who are our statisticians?
First, some of those who “took a walk” (Hugo, Englin) were GONE. Hugo’s wife had a baby on Friday. Englin’s darling son was seriously ill. At least one other person was out of the room. So let’s not use words like “taking a walk” quite so loosely.
Second, as Waldo says, the bill PASSED with the interest cap.
And, BTW, Caleb is just fine now.
I’m working determining such things for every vote on Richmond Sunlight, to determine whether partisanship, contributions, seniority, geographic location, etc. is a significant predictor of voting patterns.
If anybody knows of any such software — something Linux-based that can be called from the command line or from within Perl, PHP, etc. — I’m all ears. So far I have only the PEAR statistics package, which I’m not thrilled with.
Leslie – I have never taken a walk on any vote, and I never will. Had I been there and not caring for a sick child, I would have proudly voted for Del. McClellan’s amendment, and I look forward to a recorded vote on the bill tomorrow.
Maybe Jeff Fredrick was busy waving to a nearby camera, thus, too busy to vote.
If I understand this correctly, prior to the amendment offered by Del. McClellan, the existing 300+% was going to stay in effect. The amendment capped the interest at 72%, which certainly was an improvement.
Waldo – I just looked around for some communities that might be able to connect you with a programmer who’d be into developing something like this.
You might try the Democracy in Cyberspace Initiative at Yale Law School, http://islandia.law.yale.edu/isp/strongdem/overview.html. They would probably take interest in your greater goal with this website as well as giving you a tip to finding a programmer willing to donate some time.
@Waldo: Doing so would oh, quadruple the value of Richmond Sunlight. I’d have to nominate you for some sort of Nobel Prize for Open Government.
Wow, that seems like a really great program, Kai — thanks very much for that reference. I have a meeting with some folks at UVa about a related project later on this week — I’ll see if they have any suggested approaches, too.
I’ve often said that Richmond Sunlight, as it launched, was at a base level. That was the absolute bare minimum that could be done. It’s when all of that information comes together in one place that the fun — like regression analysis — happens. :)
Could anyone explain why 72% was chosen it seems like such a random number
My technology skills are fairly basic maybe this tool could help?
http://salstat.sourceforge.net/index.php?index
That specific tool won’t help (it’s graphical, intended to be run at the desktop, rather than on a server), but the site for it is quite helpful — you’ve sent me down a path that I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered. Thanks for that!
72% was chosen because it is double the 36% cap the federal government imposes on military personnel. After the feds discovered the military readiness was being effected by the back breaking debt created by pay day lenders they capped it. I want to remind everyone that this type of lending was illegal prior to 2002.
Maybe Frederick, Marshall, and Lingamfelter were off in a strategy session for HB 2797. Geez, half the PWC delegation was MIA.
By my math, folks who received $0-$999 were twice as likely to vote for the amendment as against it. But folks who received $1,000+ were evenly split. Seems to me that receiving large amounts of money from the payday loan industry is a significant predictor of voting outcome.
Folks
I am sorry to say that Delegate Ware pulled his bill from the floor of the House today on the third reading. This is really disappointing given the need for an interest rate cap as part of real reform.
We had wanted 36%, the Consumer Finance rate, but we realized that public policy is about compromise. Sadly, the industry does not see it that way and is not willing to be satisfied with double the usury rate.
Using vpap.org stats to prove possible causality between money and how people vote.
Does this work for donors?
There are two schools of thought on the validity of assuming causality between contributions and voting behavior. The first is that contributions are made to those elected officials whose voting behavior tends to benefit the individual or organization making the contribution. The second is that elected officials modify their voting behavior to ensure that they will receive contributions. The reason that there are two schools of thought on this is because there are two variables. Elected officials do not have a mission statement and, thus, they’re prone to changing their outlooks.
Donations to advocacy organizations, though — which I assume you’re referring to — are reduced to just one variable: the donor. The organization itself has a mission and has to operate within those confines. Individuals contributing to them cannot hope to alter its mission beyond a limited scope. Their donation says far more about them than it does about that organization. The one caveat that I’ll put there is those organizations with a very small contributor base with contributors that are clearly antithetical to the organization’s stated mission. For example, consider an environmental organization sponsored entirely by ExxonMobil. That’s certainly cause for suspicion.