Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger yesterday defended her predecessor's decision to assert greater control over the agency's fair lending office, signaling she had no plans to reverse the controversial move, Politico reported. Kraninger, making her first appearance before the House Financial Services Committee since taking over the helm of the agency in December from Mick Mulvaney, was sharply questioned by Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) about the move, which civil rights advocates have decried as an effort to sideline the office and curb enforcement. When Waters repeatedly asked her whether any new fair lending investigations had been opened in the three months since Kraninger took over, she demurred, saying enforcement attorneys make the decision to open any such probes. Waters was a severe critic of Mulvaney, now President Donald Trump's acting chief of staff, who ran the agency for more than a year. During his tenure, he worked to scale back the CFPB's enforcement actions, cut its budget and install political appointees in key posts. One of Mulvaney’s first steps upon taking over in late November 2017 was to shift the Office of Fair Lending into the director's office, effectively sidelining the office's Obama-era chief, Patrice Ficklin. No fair lending cases have been announced since then. That decision sparked an outcry, with the union representing CFPB employees filing a “mass grievance” complaint calling, among other things, for the bureau to put a temporary halt to the planned reorganization.
