CONDO CRAZE & HOA'S |
about his community association bills with a disclaimer -- saying that he is not an attorney and is actually not well educated.
When questioned about the Grand v. Cohn case, Fasano discussed his opinion about "vested" rights -- stating that he thinks VOTING definitely is a vested right. This explanation caused one caller to ask the Senator why the provisions that would have created HOA elections (FS 720) mirroring condo elections was removed from the bill, considering that election fraud runs rampant in Florida's HOAs. Senator Fasano claimed that it was very controversial and was removed in order to not to endanger the progress of the whole bill. Who thinks that creating better election provisions would be controversial? The same legislators who use "REDISTRICTING" as a tool to thwart fair elections?
Another
caller asked: "Currently, the HOA owners have really no place to turn to if the attorney, the
managers and the board decide to hijack the association. And really, the enforcement should not be the responsibility of the owners. So my question:
Do you believe that owners should have to spend a lifetime savings to bring boards into compliance, to follow the
law. And if you don't believe that this is our job, rather the state's job, what
are you planning to do about it?"
That opened a Pandora's box of unanswered questions, all discussing the lack of regulation of the many mandatory homeowners' associations.
Most
likely the most important question: "However controversial it is when it comes to HOA
glitch bills? There seems to be a consensus out there that some more regulation wouldn't be a bad thing."
With this answer Senator Fasano showed once again that he still doesn't understand the difference between voluntary and mandatory homeowners' Associations. Members of the HOA TASK FORCE already tried to explain this important difference to Senator Fasano during their meetings in 2003/2004 -- obviously in vain.
It was interesting to listen to Senator Fasano's view of these problematic issues, but listeners were actually left with more unanswered questions than satisfactory answers. |