The anger has long been there, simmering and festering as Ohioans paid late fees to credit-card companies and watched as interest rates magically jumped many percentage points.

All it needed was a release.

"I hope (these comments) will affect the regulators just like they affected me when I read them," said Richard Cordray, state treasurer, as he dumped a box chock full of angry comments onto a table yesterday at the Statehouse during a news conference.

The Federal Reserve Board's public comment period on proposed changes to the way credit-card companies do business ended yesterday -- and more than 5,000 furious Buckeyes gave the feds the what for.

Hilary Marhover of Worthington wrote about how her fixed rate was "increased for no reason to 20.99 percent" even though she never missed a payment. "This is an unfair practice and should never be allowed."

Richard Pritchard of Columbus said his interest rate jumped to 30 percent. "These are Mafia loan-shark rates and should be outlawed."

The Federal Reserve received about 35,000 comments as of July 25, the last time the total was tabulated.

It just went up.

Cordray, who urged Ohio residents to comment on the state treasurer's Web site and on postcards, said his office collected 5,373 individual comments, plus resolutions from 57 city councils and county commissions representing 4.7 million state residents.

"The biggest thing people wrote about were fees, penalties and interest rates," Cordray said. "People feel nickeled and dimed on these fees, only now it's not nickels and dimes. It's $25 or $30 and it can add up to be hundreds and thousands a year."

The Federal Reserve -- which developed the changes in May along with the National Credit Union Administration and Office of Thrift Supervision -- could adopt the new, more consumer-friendly, regulations by the end of the year.

Then again, they could opt not to make the changes law.

The proposed regulations would require lenders to allow borrowers a reasonable amount of time to make payments, prohibit raising the interest rate on pre-existing cards, prevent credit-card companies from applying payments to lower-interest balances first, and ban "two-cycle billing," in which lenders base fees on the average balance over a two-month period rather than the most recent month.

Consumer advocacy groups and actual consumers hail the changes as fair and necessary. The banking industry says the rules will make it harder for many people to get credit cards and force those who handle their credit well to subsidize those who don't.

"I'm not naive; I know it will be a challenge to get this done," Cordray said of what he called the "behind the scenes" pressure being put on the Federal Reserve by the Bush administration and bank lobbying groups.

The American Bankers Association, which represents 95 percent of the industry's $13.3 trillion in assets, issued a 32-page statement yesterday opposing the proposed changes.

ABA President and CEO Ed Yingling argued the changes are "inappropriate" and that "the banking industry's mainstream credit-card practices are not unfair to customers."

Cordray said he doesn't buy the banking industry's claim the changes will reduce credit-card availability and raise the cost for all consumers.

"There is plenty of room for the bank's bottom line and to be fair at the same time," he said.

swartenberg@dispatch.com