SALT LAKE CITY — Before he was a University of Utah law professor — and the 2020 Democratic nominee for Utah governor — Chris Peterson worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“The CFPB is the agency that the government has to try to make sure that our credit cards and mortgage loans and bank accounts are safe and fair,” Peterson told FOX 13 News in an interview.
While there, Peterson “designed law enforcement cases against banks and other financial companies that had, generally speaking, misled their customers. And I also advised the director of that agency for a few years on policy issues in the law.”
Peterson is one of the CFPB’s defenders, testifying before Congress last year about the bureau’s attributes nationwide. Utah has been a recipient of its work, too.
Data from the bureau says over more than 13 years, it took action on 29,767 complaints filed by Utahns. The most common of those were about credit reporting or credit repair services.
The CFPB says it’s collected $29 million in civil penalties for Utahns since 2010, sometimes working with state government. In 2018, the Utah Division of Consumer Protection announced that the Beehive State was receiving $10 million from a settlement the CFPB negotiated with Wells Fargo.
More such settlements appear unlikely anytime soon. The Associated Press has reported that the bureau is the latest agency to have its work halted by the Trump Administration.
The shutdown could impact two lawsuits pending against Utah companies in federal court. The CFPB is suing Acima Holdings, LLC, and Snap Financial, LLC, in separate cases.
Acima offers “rent-to-own” agreements for consumers to acquire household goods. Snap offers “rental-purchase” or “lease-purchase” financing for merchandise. In both lawsuits, the CFPB accuses the companies of “deceptive” practices.
Acima is a subsidiary of Rent-A-Center, though that parent company is not a party in the lawsuit. Both Acima and Snap have denied the CFPB claims and are contesting them in court.
One of Acima’s attorneys is the brother of new U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to court records and a profile of Bondi and her family published by Open Secrets.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has long complained about the CFPB and co-sponsored legislation to defund it. Lee and other critics say that since the bureau receives money directly from the Federal Reserve rather than appropriations from Congress the bureau isn’t accountable to Congress.
“To the best of my knowledge,” said Adam J. White, of the American Enterprise Institute, in 2024 testimony at that Congressional hearing with Peterson, “no regulatory agency is allowed to simply reach into a completely different source of federal money to be the agency’s main source of revenue. No other agency gets to treat the Federal Reserve as a regulatory slush fund.”
And some researchers have contended the regulations the bureau has placed on lenders have increased banking and borrowing fees for consumers.
“In a reasonable mixed market economy like ours,” Peterson counters, “we're going to have to have some safety features and some rules to keep the public safe, or we're going to have problems.
“But the CFPB actually returns more money to the pockets of consumers who have been misled by deceptive practices, than the entire budget of the agency.”
For now, the lawsuits against Acima and Snap remain pending in federal court.