Timothy Ryan's swearing in as director of the Office of Thrift Supervision formally ends a period of legal uncertainty that has threatened to halt the government's massive thrift bailout program.
Ryan, 44, vows to be tough on the fraud and corruption that has been blamed for much of the thrift industry's woes and called for increased coordination among federal agencies to regulate savings and loan institutions."We need to strengthen the cooperation among OTS, the Justice Department and other regulatory agencies," he said.
Ryan, a Washington lawyer and solicitor at the Labor Department during the early part of the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1983, had been criticized by some Democratic lawmakers for his lack of experience in the thrift business.
But the Senate confirmed Ryan for his thrift agency post by a relatively comfortable 62-37 margin on April 4.
The confirmation ended a controversy ignited by Olympic Federal Savings and Loan Association of Berwyn, Ill., which won a court order barring the government from seizing it.
It argued that former OTS Director M. Danny Wall and acting Director Salvatore Martoche held office illegally because they were not confirmed by the Senate as the Constitution requires.
Regulators had feared that the Olympic case would inspire a flood of challenges by thrift managers who wanted to prevent the government from seizing and selling their institutions.
But with Ryan's confirmation and swearing-in, lawyers said the issue has been defused, although litigation in the Olympic case may continue over other grounds.