Cyber Citizens For Justice Weblog

On 20 Apr 2006, the Lake Place Condominium Association was served with 26 recall ballots signed by owners unhappy with three of their directors.

Since their Board of Directors ignored this recall, these owners filed a Petition for Arbitration on 28 Apr with the Department of Business & Professional Regulation (DBPR).

Not until 9 Oct 2006, some 163 days later, did DBPR respond - finding that the recall was, indeed, valid.

During that time, these owners had to live with the decisions of the same three directors who had legitimately been recalled - and who were spending significant amounts of the owners’ money on an attorney who was acting in their interests - not the interests of the owners.  This disgraceful performance raises two major questions and a host of follow-up questions.  The two major questions are:

• Why did it take DBPR 163 days to reach a decision?
• Why should owners have to pay the legal costs of these ousted directors?

Obviously we don’t know why the DBPR took so long to reach a decision but since justice delay is justice denied there’s good reason to speculate about some possible answers.

 Is the DBPR so overwhelmed by similar complaints that it’s impossible to act promptly?

Is the DBPR so mismanaged that it can’t do a vital assigned task?

Is the DBPR management inept at establishing and following sensible priorities?

 

Is the DBPR too understaffed or inept to complete its assigned tasks in a reason time?

Are political considerations or pressure hobbling the DBPR? 

Has the management of the DBPR brought this situation to the attention of the governor, the legislature and the press? 

If not, why not? If the DBPR’s senior staff doesn’t care about owners’ rights and doing its assigned tasks proficiently and promptly, why are we wasting money funding it?

Perhaps it’s time for owners to lobby the legislature to eliminate decorative but unproductive bureaucracies.  Do nothing cronies, hacks and stoogies are unaffordable luxuries.  It’s cheaper to ignore owner’s rights by not having a bureaucracy.  Then the governor and the legislature could honestly say that we don’t have the right people to handle that issue.  The latter approach would at least keep taxes down.

As for the second major question, why should owners pay …   That the law, stupid; or to put in more technically and politically correct terms, that’s the stupid state law.  Fortunately, you can do something about stupid laws.  Get involved.  Lobby to get them repealed or revised. Ask for a hunting license to literally shoot  bureaucrats suspected of bungling, starting at the top.  If forces to compromise, settle for being allowed to shoot down budgets for bungling bureaucracies, starting with the DBPR. 

While you’re at it, run for your board.  When you win, revise your community’s governing documents.  Two important revisions to consider are :

1) set qualification standard for board candidates to prevent bozos from being elected, and

2) limit the board’s powers to botch things so badly as to trigger a recall.

 An ounce of prevent is worth more than a pound of cure.

In May, 2006, two owners of condominiums at Lido Towers in Sarasota filed a complaint with the Department of Business & Professional Regulation (DBPR) citing violation of Florida Statute 718.112(2)(c), which guarantees (condominium) owners the right to speak to agenda items at board meetings.

The complaint arose out of a letter sent to all owners by the association president describing a new “protocol” for board meetings which required owners to submit any statement they wished to make at board meetings in writing prior to the meeting - or be forced to wait until the end of the meeting to speak, after all board agenda items have been decided. This would effectively deny owners the right to speak to agenda items at the time of their discussion.

In their response to the complaint, DBPR affirrmed the right of owners to speak - but took the position that a violation does not occur until an owner is actually prevented from speaking - and closed the complaint without any communication with, or counseling of, the association president.

Evidently DBPR does not consider it a violation to mislead or intimidate owners regarding their rights. Instead, some persistent owner must be victimized and actually denied the right to speak before DBPR will intervene.

In April, 2005, the Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) published a report citing several actions which DBPR should take “to improve the effectiveness of its services”. Those actions included:

• Strengthen enforcement action
• Increase use of mediation

A year later, neither of those actions was taken in the case described above.

Based on its long record of inaction and ineffective action, the DBPR is misnamed.   It would be far more accurate to call it the Department of Blather, Procrastination and Real Uselessness.  That might be unfair in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of politics where things are deliberately mislabeled to obscure their purpose.  But we who live in the real world perfer to know what our money, especially our tax dollars, buys. 

With elections coming up and the economy slowing down, it’s time to make sure your money is well spent.  The next governor should eliminate funding for the DBPR.  Consider voting for the candidate that promises to do so.  Afterall, the DBPR’s record shows that its actual “function” is to obstruct or prevent implementation of effective protection for millions of Florida voters.  Why pay for something we don’t want?  Why pay for what we already get for free from CAI and its local supporters?