Soon after the Rev. Wallace Hartsfield of Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church in Kansas City received the letter, a lawyer called. Had he received the letter? Hartsfield remembers being asked. He responded, "If you feel like we’re doing something illegal, you need to try to sue, all right?" he recalls. Ultimately, no suits or other actions appear to have been filed against any faith groups involved in the initiative fight.
MECO did not respond to requests for comment. The law firm behind the letter, Anthony & Middlebrook of Grapevine, Texas, referred comment to the lawyer who had handled the matter, who has left the firm. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Payday lenders and their allies took other steps as well. A Republican lobbyist submitted what appears to have been a decoy initiative to the Missouri Secretary of State that, to the casual reader, closely resembled the original measure to cap loans at 36 percent. It proposed to cap loans at 14 percent, but stated that the limit would be void if the borrower signed a contract to pay a higher rate — in other words, it wouldn’t change anything. A second initiative submitted by the same lobbyist, Jewell Patek, would have made any measure to cap loan interest rates unlawful. Patek declined to comment.
MECO spent at least $800,000 pushing the rival initiatives with its own crew of signature gatherers, according to the group’s state filings. It was an effective tactic, saidGerth, of the St. Louis congregations group. People became confused about which was the "real" petition or assumed they had signed the 36 percent cap petition when they had not, he and others who worked on the effort said.
Read More | "The Payday Playbook: How High Cost Lenders Fight to Stay Legal" | Paul Kiel | ?ProPublica