The Morning Blend
Welcome
Complete Media Kit
PHOENIX — Jack LaSota is taping radio ads and phone messages urging Arizonans to vote for Proposition 200 saying that, as the former state attorney general, he knows “the payday loan industry needs to be reformed.”
But what LaSota does not disclose is that his law firm, Miller, LaSota & Peters, is the official paid lobbyist for the group of payday lenders that already has collected more than $13.4 million for Proposition 200, the main provision of which would keep the industry in business in this state.
In fact, it was Lee Miller, LaSota’s partner, who lobbied the Legislature last year to repeal a provision of state law that, if it remains in place, will put the payday lending industry out of business. When that failed, the lenders decided to go to the ballot instead. And the pro-200 campaign itself has paid the firm of Miller, LaSota and Peters more than $8,500 for “professional services.”
In neither the radio ad nor the “robo calls” going to the homes of voters does LaSota mention that he never actually was elected the state attorney general. Instead, he inherited the job when his boss, Bruce Babbitt, became governor in 1978 after the death of Wesley Bolin and kept the post for less than two years..
|
|
LaSota did not return repeated phone calls to his office, home or mobile. Calls to Stan Barnes, who is managing the campaign, also were not returned.
Both the commercial and telephone calls are part of the industry’s campaign to convince voters that Proposition 200 would reform payday lending. The radio ad says that the industry “needs to be stopped” and that the measure would “crack down on the payday loan industry.”
The only way listeners would know the commercials and phone calls are being paid for by the industry is if they know the “Arizona Community Financial Services Association,” the group listed as the source of funding, is the payday lenders’ organization.
“As the former chief law enforcement officer of our state, I can tell you with confidence that the payday loan industry needs to be reformed in order to better protect Arizona consumers,” LaSota says in the automated telephone calls.
No On Prop 200 wrote on Nov 3, 2008 12:25 PM: