December 17, 2009

Picking up a line of attack begun months ago by the Florida Republican Party, gubernatorial hopeful Bill McCollum is accusing his Democratic rival, Alex Sink, of using ``deceptive loan practices'' while she was a top banker.It's a risky political strategy, considering McCollum's history with the mortgage industry. As a member of Congress from 1980 to 2000, McCollum served on the committee overseeing financial services and co-sponsored 1999 legislation that tore down the Depression-era firewall between investment banks and commercial banks.

After he left Congress, McCollum lobbied for the Mortgage Bankers Association of America and for a nonprofit with a down-payment assistance program that was later outlawed by Congress after the Internal Revenue Service dubbed the program a ``scam.''At a Tampa fundraiser on Wednesday, McCollum defended his lobbying and record in Congress, and he retreated slightly from linking Sink to the foreclosure crisis. She retired as head of Bank of America in Florida in 2000 and says she did not supervise mortgage lending.