It must be high stakes if the boss of the nation's largest publicly traded payday lender gives up a weekend with his family to hang out in Richmond.

Advance America's Ken Compton flew from South Carolina -- apparently aboard one of the company jets that once ferried former presidential wannabe Mark Warner, who helped open Virginia to lenders in 2002 -- for secret talks over legislation to clean up the high-cost instant-loan business.

Perhaps Compton's trip was an attempt at credibility by a little-understood industry that, despite a nonstop charm offensive, is seen by some the same way cigarette makers are: slick, evasive, too cozy with politicians.

Don't you love the TV commercials urging restraint in taking out payday loans? All that's missing is the surgeon general's warning: "Caution! Payday loans are hazardous to your health." And go figure: The latest print ads that depict critics as perfidious use an image associated with lenders themselves -- a shifty looking guy who might pass for a loan shark.

The talks -- still continuing, by mobile phone and quickie asides among lobbyists -- may prove little more than circumlocution.

Even AG Bob McDonnell, a Republican who ducked this fight last year, is circulating ideas. Nothing sharpens the mind like gubernatorial ambition.

There's no agreement, and probably never will be, on a 36-percent interest cap. Most lenders say that puts them out of business. Some opponents say that's the point. How about tiered rates?

There are solutions -- to the absence of competition that allows money stores to spread like kudzu, to the lack of transparency in a business that seems murky to many, to the supposed debt trap that ensnares the inattentive and irresponsible.

Pull for Wal-Mart to expand its financial services. It offers check-cashing and debit cards. Small-dollar loans could be next. A plus for Wal-Mart: Much of the cash it dispenses is likely spent in those big-box stores on things that drive Virginians to borrow $1.3 billion a year from payday lenders, including food, car repairs and health care. Cynics might call this one-stop fleecing.

And never underestimate the efficiency of the economy. The subprime gamble is killing banks and financial houses. Is the payday biz next? Maybe Bank of America will pull back on its credit line for Advance America. Is there no honor among lenders?

What's to stop credit unions from going head to head with payday lenders? Sixty credit unions have paydaylike products with low-double-digit rates. With the state's OK -- usually a formality -- credit unions could open branches and bust up those clusters of garishly colored cash shops.

Depending on who's doing the spinning -- lenders or their foes -- credit unions have failed or succeeded in Pennsylvania, Kansas and North Carolina in providing cheaper cash fixes.

As for consumer protection, what about a payday-lending board? Made up of lenders, a consumer advocate and a state lawyer, and folded into the State Corporation Commission, it could professionalize the industry and weed out bad guys by fully disclosing offenses and penalties. That's what lawyers do; doctors, too. Check 'n Go's recent misdeeds couldn't be buried as they were under SCC balderdash.

And perhaps more people would have a better idea just what they're getting themselves into.
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 6496814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com. He provides news analysis each Friday at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE radio (88.9 FM).