DaytonDailyNews.com

Payday lenders are trying to confuse you. Shamelessly, aggressively, deceitfully.

They don't want you to know that voting "yes" on Issue 5 will rein in their businesses, prohibiting them from gouging mostly poor people.

Payday lenders are those storefronts that offer to cash post-dated checks and/or loan people money for a week or two. Having access to a short-term loan can make all the difference in the world to someone who is facing steep late charges for their rent or multiple overdraft charges because a deposit didn't clear.

The payday lenders' product is not the problem. The terms of their loans are what's scandalous.

Payday lenders charge people bankrupting rates. On an annualized basis, they were hitting 391 percent until Ohio's Legislature imposed a more reasonable limit of 28 percent. On top of that, many customers were paying these huge rates not for weeks, but months, because they were rolling loans over and over again.

Issue 5 asks this question: Do you want to keep the new law with its consumer protections?

Your vote should be "yes," absolutely, unequivocally.

If you vote no, then the new protections are nixed. In specific terms, those protections mean people can be charged $18 to borrow $300 for two weeks, but not $45.

Payday lenders are airing ludicrous campaign commercials that would lead you to believe that Issue 5 is about creating and protecting jobs and that the proposal has something to do with the "mortgage mess" in Washington. A recurring pitch is that consumers should have a choice about what kind of loans they can get.

All of this is baloney. The truth is that Democrats and Republicans looked into the business practices of an industry that was advertising heavily in poor neighborhoods and near military bases, essentially encouraging people to get caught up in a crippling debt spiral. They were appalled about what they learned.

Make no mistake. Well-to-do people weren't taking out these loans. Payday clients are, in almost all cases, low-income, if not downright poor. Many are unsophisticated about money, and they just don't do the math before they sign on the dotted line.

It's too simple to just blame them for their decisions. That's forgetting that government does have a responsibility to make sure businesses don't rip off people. And be realistic. It's not shocking that some consumers are drawn in by fast-talking sales pitches when they're in a financial emergency.

Think about all the college graduates, middle-class people and even outwardly well-to-do people who have credit-card debt, which carries exceedingly high interest rates. Many of them know better, but still find themselves tempted to spend too freely and then paying stunning finance charges. If they fall into this habit, think how hard it is to resist taking out even a bad loan when you're in a genuine financial crisis.

Voting yes on Issue 5 won't put the payday businesses out of business. It, however, will require them to abide by rules designed to prevent people from taking out loan after loan, and consumers will be charged a more reasonable rate.

Don't be fooled. Vote "yes" on Issue 5.