California Gov. Gavin Newsom yesterday announced that Suzanne Martindale has been appointed the Senior Deputy Commissioner of Consumer Financial Protection at the state’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI). Martindale has spent the past 10 years working as Senior Policy Counsel and Western States Legislative Manager for Consumer Reports, the advocacy group.
Martindale needs to be confirmed by the state Senate before she can begin working at DFPI. It was not immediately clear where Martindale’s position would fit on the DFPI’s most recently published organizational chart, although it does appear that Senior Deputy Commissioners sit one rung below the Commissioner and Chief Deputy Commissioner.
The DFPI recently announced it had issued subpoenas to a dozen different debt collection companies as part of an investigation as a result of consumer complaints about alleged unlawful, unfair, deceptive, or abusive collection practices.
Without knowing anything about her priorities should she be confirmed to her new seat, it might be insightful to look at some of her past statements related to debt collection.
When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its debt collection rule last October, Martindale released the following statement:
“Debt collectors are notorious for hounding consumers and filing lawsuits about debts that have already been paid off or were never owed in the first place. The CFPB’s new rule does nothing about this egregious practice, and fails to ensure that debt collectors can prove that money is actually owed and they have the legal right to pursue the debt.”
When the CFPB released its proposed debt collection rule in May 2019, here is what Martindale had to say:
“The C.F.P.B.’s proposal does nothing to ensure debt collectors document that they are attempting to collect from the right person, for the right amount. By ignoring this central problem with our broken debt collection system, the C.F.P.B. is failing to fulfill its statutory mission to protect consumers.”
