State securities regulators are worried about threats to the independence of the financial regulatory establishment.

Included among their priorities this year is a promise to fight against efforts to hamstring or intimidate regulatory actions, said Mike Rothman, who is both the president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, and Minnesota’s commerce commissioner.

NASAA wants to ensure that regulators have “independence and the ability to take timely action,” Rothman told reporters Thursday.

The group has seen a number of proposals out of Congress that would crimp regulators’ power, said Michael Canning, director of policy at NASAA.

These include bills that would “dramatically ratchet up cost/benefit requirements on independent regulatory agencies, such that they would cripple the agencies’ ability to get any rules done,” Canning said. Other proposals would require legislative consent for any new rules.

NASAA supports efforts to make regulations more efficient, Canning added, “but not to the extent that the goal is to delay or obstruct legitimate rule-making interests or to diminish the independence of regulators.”

Regarding investor protection, Rothman said state securities cops continue to support the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule and want to see a heightened standard of care applied to all brokerage activity.

“Establishing a fiduciary duty … governing the conduct of broker-dealers and their agents is crucial for the protection of investors,” NASAA said in a statement.

State regulators support the idea of user fees to pay for more oversight of investment advisors. But the chance of Congress acting in that area is a “long shot going into this year,” Canning said. “If we had another Madoff or something on that scale, I think the politics of this could turn in an instant, so we want to keep it out there.”

NASAA is also continuing its push for passage of the Senior Safe Act, a bill passed last year in the House and pending in the Senate, which would give financial firms immunity from privacy violations when they disclose to authorities possible cases of senior exploitation.

In addition, the organization is talking to members of the Senate Aging Committee about legislation to create a federal grant program to fund state efforts to protect seniors. NASAA also wants Congress to ask the Government Accountability Office to study the economic cost of senior financial exploitation.

Some states have done some of their own studies, Rothman said, “but to have that done [by the GAO to] objectively … inform Congress and all of us would be really helpful.”