June 7, 2018 SAN FRANCISCO – In a statement released today, Paulina Gonzalez, Executive Director of the California Reinvestment Coalition said:

Today, in a move that signals the continuing attempts by Acting Director Mick Mulvaney to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from within, leadership at the Bureau informed me, along with other Consumer Advisory Board (CAB) members and members of two other CFPB Advisory Boards, that we were fired.

The Consumer Advisory Board has played a vital role in setting the CFPB’s priorities and ensuring that the Bureau is acting in the best interest of impacted communities. The actions by Mulvaney today speak to the direction of the Bureau, which under his leadership have been entirely focused on industry interests, such as dismantling consumer protections, weakening fair lending enforcement, scrapping auto discriminatory lending guidance, ignoring its duty to develop small business lending rules, and failing to implement hard-won payday lending rules. By firing the CAB, Mulvaney is taking away an important voice of working-class Californians who have never fully recovered from the Wall-Street financial crisis, and who are still struggling to stay in their homes and access safe, affordable credit and financial products.

While deeply disappointed by this move, the Californian Reinvestment Coalition (CRC) and our members will continue to work to ensure that Wall Street, big banks, and the regulatory agencies that oversee them, are held accountable to operating in the best interest of all Californians. Which raises the question: Does this administration and its acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even like consumers? CRC will not falter in our work to hold Wall Street accountable, nor will we stop working to protect the true mission of the CFPB which now seems to be working for the big banks instead of American families.

CRC Media Contact: Nehama Rogozen, 415-676-1320 nrogozen@calreinvest.org