State Rep takes heat for ignoring payday loan ordinance

A state representative, who owns several payday loan businesses across Texas, including in El Paso, is under fire.

According to the Houston Chronicle, several of his employees in other Texas cities were cited for violating new payday loan ordinance.

That state representative is Gary Elkins from Houston. He owns nearly a dozen Power Finance stores throughout the state and according to an article in Tuesday’s Houston Chronicle, many of them are not following the new rules. So ABC-7 checked out the situation in El Paso.

“It’s very concerning,” City Rep. Claudia Ordaz said.

Ordaz is a big supporter of El Paso’s new payday loan ordinance, which went into effect in January. It limits payday loans to 20 percent of the borrowers gross monthly income and title loans to either three percent of the borrowers gross annual income or 70 percent of a vehicle’s value. It also limits the number of installments to four and rollovers and renewals to three.

“Two people very close to me in my family got wrapped up in payday lending and it took a toll on our family,” Ordaz said. “So this gives me heartburn.”

That heartburn came when ABC-7 pointed out the story in the Houston Chronicle, which reads that Elkins not only owns a payday lending chain, but many of his businesses are allegedly not following the new rules.

“Every legislative session, he along with other members and some powerful lobbyists are trying to kill legislation that’s trying to protect consumers,” Ordaz said. “Even our own governor appointed William White to the Texas Finance Commission to help protect consumers, but he’s also the vice president of Cash America. So what does that say about our state?”

Elkins owns a total of 11 Power Finance stores in Texas, including two in East El Paso. According to the Houston Chronicle, his employees have been cited for ignoring the ordinance in San Antonio, Houston and Dallas. But it’s unclear whether his employees are also ignoring the ordinance in El Paso.”

An El Paso city employee told the Houston Chronicle the ordinance is not yet being enforced in El Paso, despite the fact it went into effect more than 10 months ago.

“It’s very concerning and what you’re mentioning here about the City not enforcing this is something that I’m certainly going to look into and I’ll get back to you right away, because we already have obstacles with our own state, we shouldn’t have those with our own city,” Ordaz said.

ABC-7 asked the City, and the City Attorney’s office for comment on that assertion the payday loan ordinance is not yet being enforced in El Paso. Instead ABC-7 received a copy of the ordinance with no answer to the specific question.