Ryan Wins Slim OK as Regulator of S

The Senate Banking Committee today narrowly endorsed President Bush’s nominee for top savings and loan regulator.

The panel voted 11 to 10 to recommend T. Timothy Ryan Jr. to be director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision. The matter now goes to the full Senate.

Two Democrats joined all nine Republicans on the panel in backing Ryan. The vote came after Democrats spent 90 minutes complaining that Ryan, a former senior Labor Department official, lacks experience for the job.

Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.), said Ryan’s qualifications are “woefully short of the quality necessary to do this job.” Riegle had said earlier that the panel probably would vote against Ryan’s nomination.

Republicans argued that someone with more experience in the savings and loan industry probably would be disqualified by virtue of conflicts of interest. They argued that rejecting Ryan would only serve to derail Bush’s savings and loan bailout and increase costs to the taxpayer.

Democrats voting for Ryan were Sens. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama and Terry Sanford of North Carolina. Sanford told reporters he was a personal friend of Ryan and Shelby said he believes it is important to fill the position quickly and that the full Senate should vote on the nomination.

The Administration has had difficulty finding a nominee since M. Danny Wall announced in early December that he would resign. It has been under pressure to find a replacement because at least five thrifts are challenging the thrift office’s constitutional authority to seize troubled S&Ls.;

Last summer’s S&L; legislation automatically gave the director’s job to Wall, chairman of the thrift office’s predecessor agency, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. He was not nominated and confirmed for the director’s job.

In the latest challenge, U.S. District Judge Charles A. Legge in San Francisco on Thursday denied a temporary restraining order that would have removed government agents from the helm of Pacific Coast Savings & Loan Assn., a San Francisco-based institution with $1.04 billion in assets.

Ryan, a former senior Labor Department official nominated last week, met skepticism from committee Democrats during a hearing on his nomination Wednesday.

Lawmakers questioned his lack of direct experience in banking and raised concerns about possible conflicts of interest in his work as a private attorney after leaving government in 1983.

The Administration has portrayed Ryan as an experienced manager who supervised 600 attorneys at the Labor Department and a tough enforcer who helped clean up corruption in the Teamsters pension fund.