Wall Street reformers sounded the alarm Friday after the Federal Reserve’s top bank regulator outlined some changes he would like to see in the nuts-and-bolts of how the Fed staff supervises the nation’s biggest Wall Street banks.

In a luncheon speech, Randal Quarles, the Fed’s vice chairman for supervision, laid out plans that he said would make the Fed’s supervisory process more transparent and accountable. He called his ideas “incremental.”

Dennis Kelleher, the chief executive of Better Markets, scoffed at Quarles’ assessment that the changes were small. In an interview, Kelleher called the plans “shocking” and said they would weaken “every aspect” of government oversight of Wall Street.

Gregg Gelzinis, senior policy analyst with the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said Quarles’ supervisory proposals “would materially shift the balance of power in the supervisory process towards banks and lead to much weaker oversight.”

The end result would be “a meaningfully less safe banking sector.”

One proposal from Quarles would make the Fed submit “significant supervisory guidance” to Congress. The central bank issues guidance to outline their supervisory expectations, priorities and general views about what activities are appropriate.

At the moment, the Fed only submits rules to Congress.

Quarles said submitting the guidance would “enhance the Fed’s accountability and help build support” for it.

Kelleher called this a “jaw-dropping proposal.”

“I’ve never heard anyone ever suggest Congress should decide how the Fed supervised the biggest banks,” he said.

One of the biggest problems facing the financial system is the power and ability of Wall Street lobbyists to sway the Congress, Kelleher said. Quarles’ plan would allow a mere majority in Congress to overturn Fed guidance.

The result would be a re-run of the last financial crisis, where regulators “were cheered on not to do their jobs by elected officials purchased by Wall Street banks,” he said.

Quarles’ shift to focusing on a “banker-friendlier brand” of supervision is a natural next step because the Fed has finished much of the work in implementing legislation championed mainly by Republicans tailoring Dodd-Frank rules on banks that was passed in 2018.

Jeremy Kress, an assistant professor of business law at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, said he thought the Fed could make most of Quarles’ proposed changes on its own. That means convincing the other three sitting Fed governors and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.

Kress said the Fed might try to coordinate some of the reforms with other banking agencies.