We were disappointed to learn that a representative of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency backed out of a recent speaking engagement at Coastal Business Finance, the Santa Maria-based leader in small business finance.

Such a talk might have done a lot to help bankers and borrowers meet face-to-face with one of the usually faceless regulators who have been part of the crackdown on loan losses and new business lending in recent months. It would have been a unique opportunity for the Central Coast’s community banks to hear directly what the landscape looks like on the other side of the regulatory fence.

Alas, the speaker canceled at the last minute, leaving area bankers in even more of a muddle about the future of banking regulation in our region. That’s an extremely poor return on the billions of tax dollars our area banks and businesses send to the U.S. Treasury, the agency that oversees the OCC, every year.

“They talk about transparency, but this is the cloudiest transparency I’ve ever seen,” lamented Coastal Business Finance communications director Jack Pellerin, who organized the event.

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