Consumer Protection Bill Rejected

An Assembly committee has rejected, for the second time in a month, a long-sought, heavily lobbied bill to give greater privacy protections to consumers´ financial records. Consumer groups and the bill´s author, Senator Jackie Speier, say they instead will push for an initiative on next year´s ballot they say will be the nation´s strongest financial privacy protection measure.

Speier´s bill faced strong opposition from the financial community, which said it would cost too much to implement and would not be flexible enough to work with all companies.

The bill would have specified when banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions could sell or share private information about their customers.