Even though the House Bank covered his bounced checks without penalty, Rep. Wayne Owens, D-Utah, said Wednesday that his account in the bank wasn't such a good deal because it didn't earn interest.
He had a friend - Key Bank President Ross E. Kendall - figure that Owens would have been $127.27 ahead in 1989-90 if he had had an interest-bearing account at that Salt Lake bank and paid the overdraft fees it charges.Owens' spokesman Art Kingdom acknowledged that Owens released a letter from Kendall - which was written two months ago - in part to inoculate himself against almost sure-to-come political attacks for having bounced checks at the bank.
"His thinking was that it's bound to come up, and you can either wait and put out this information then, or put it out now for people to look at and show them that it wasn't that bad," Kingdom said.
Owens, who is running for the U.S. Senate, is the only Utah member of Congress known to have bounced a check at the House Bank, which was closed because of check-bouncing scandals.
He earlier had deflected much of the potential criticism by being among the first House members to acknowledge bouncing a few checks.
Kingdom said the House Bank notified Owens of "four or five" bounced checks, but the bank often failed to notify members of bounced checks and merely covered them until their next payroll check was issued - so Owens may have bounced more.
A special panel of the House Ethics Committee - on which Owens' nemesis, Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, is ranking Republican - is investigating the check bouncing and determining whether to release what it finds about individual members.
Kendall's letter released by Owens says neither how many checks he bounced nor for how much. But it said the average overdraft was for $484 and that checks were unposted for a total of 74 days (in five of 12 months) between July 5, 1989, and July 3, 1990.
Kendall figured that at his bank, Owens would have paid $74.02 in fees for the overdrafts and another $6 service fee because of a low account balance. But his average daily balance of $4,815 during that year would have brought Owens $207.29 in interest.
So Kendall figured Owens would have been $127.27 ahead if his account had been at Key Bank.
Owens said in a written statement, "I was concerned about any appearance of impropriety even though the (House) sergeant at arms was not operating a bank and no taxpayer funds were ever used.
"It was simply a pooling arrangement using the salaries of congressmen to provide services, which included overdraft protection," Owens said.
A political firestorm erupted last year after audits showed House members had bounced 8,331 checks in a year - an average of 19 per lawmaker. Also, 134 lawmakers bounced individual checks of more than $1,000.