'Rent-to-ripoff' bill is bad news

A so-called rent-to-own bill, sometimes referred to as Another Poor People Ripoff Bill, failed to win passage in the State Senate this week on an 18-15 vote. But it isn't dead. It was merely put on hold until its time is ripe -- which will probably come when enough additional campaign contributions have been made.

The bill SB 268, was kept alive by sending it back to the Senate Organizational Committee. That committee, made up of the Senate leadership, could put it back on the calendar at any time.

The bill would loosen regulations for the rent-to-own industry (I'm not sure "industry" is the proper term; "ripoff artists" comes to mind) and could lead to an explosion of as many as 300 of the stores in the state.

In case you're not familiar with the rent-to-own business, it's a business set up to rip off the poor, who cannot afford to buy appliances or furniture outright. Enter rent-to-own, which will let you have your furniture now for a monthly fee, and at the end of your contract, if you make all of your payments on time, you will own it.

Of course, by then you may have paid 10 times as much as the furniture is worth. And in many cases you will end up in default and they'll take it back anyway.

Congresswoman Gwen Moore says it was her personal experience with a rent-to-own company when she was a poor, working single mother that got her into politics. Essence magazine reports:

Congresswoman Gwen Moore's tipping point came when she was a struggling single mother of three living in a low-income neighborhood in Wisconsin. When a guy from the local rent-to-own center came to repossess her washer and dryer--which she paid for three times over because of exorbitant interest rates--the incident angered her enough to make her do something about it. She mobilized her community to march on banks and organized a community-development credit union. Her grassroots activism led to higher political aspirations, including a ten-year stint in the Wisconsin State Senate and two terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly. In January 2005 Moore, a Democrat, was sworn in as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's fourth Congressional District, one of only 20 women of color (out of 435 representatives) serving in the 109th Congress.

In hindsight, the company undoubtedly wishes it had let her keep that washer and dryer.

Sending the bill back to Senate Organization will let the posse of rent-to-own lobbyists get back to work, to try to get two Senators to switch their votes. "This bill is not going to go quietly because there's so much money in this," one Dem staffer told WisPolitics.com.

People in the Capitol were calling it the Ron Brown Re-Election Bill, I'm told. Brown, the Eau Claire Republican who is up for reelection in 2006, is the lead sponsor on the bill, and the only one willing to actually take the floor and speak in favor of it. He was surrounded by a gaggle of lobbyists the day the bill came up.

So keep an eye on this one. If and when it comes back to the floor, let's see where they found the two votes they need for passage -- and what it cost to get it done.

This is sausage-making at its worst. And the smelliest part is what you won't see, when the deals go down in secret.