North Carolina’s State Senator’s bill SB150 to study state-run bank considered long shot

Deon Roberts • www.charlotteobserver.com • March 19, 2013

In a state that’s a hub for banking, an N.C. senator is sponsoring a bill that even she admits has little chance of passage. Her measure calls for a study of a potential state-owned bank.

Eleanor Kinnaird, a Chapel Hill Democrat who says she has “very little love for this industry,” is the primary – and so far only – sponsor for Senate Bill 150, which calls for the creation of a commission to study the impact of a state-owned bank that would receive deposits of state funds.

If Kinnaird is successful, North Carolina would become the second state to have a state-owned bank. The only state with one is North Dakota.

Kinnaird’s bill doesn’t call for the creation of a state-run bank – only a study on the issue – but if such a bank were created, public dollars that state agencies now deposit in privately run banks would be deposited into the state-run bank.

Read the article here.

Read the bill SB150 here.

Proposal for Maine State Bank Back on Legislative Agenda

Tim Porter • www.mpbn.net • December 10, 2012

Two lawmakers are re-introducing a bill this session to establish a Maine state bank. Rep. Diane Russell, of Portland, and fellow Democrat Bobbi Beavers, of South Berwick, are gathering support for their proposal – which envisages, not so much a retail bank where you or I can open an account, but more of a mini-central bank where state dollars are invested, rather being invested in Wall Street. This, they say, would make more credit available to small businesses.

Read the article here.