Article
Courtesy of Florida Politics
By Jesse Scheckner
Published March 9, 2024
Malfeasant condo board members and associations that for
years have skirted Florida law through loopholes in state statutes may soon
face a reckoning due to a reform package now bound for Gov. Ron DeSantis’
desk.
Lawmakers unanimously passed
HB 1021,
which will overhaul state laws governing condo oversight and management by
holding condo buildings and their boards more accountable for their
maintenance, repairs, reserves and recordkeeping.
Fleming Island Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley, who carried the legislation
with Miami Republican Rep. Vicki Lopez, gave a brief overview of the
measure’s provisions.
Among other things, it creates new education requirements for condo managers
and improves transparency by requiring that building records be available
online to owners. The bill also clarifies obligations for hurricane
protection and revises Florida’s anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against
public participation) laws to bar board members from using condo association
funds for defamation actions.
Notably, it would also delete a line from Florida Statutes that today
hinders the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) from
enforcing condo and condo association laws.
To pay for added DBPR operations and staff to enforce the law, the measure
includes a $7.4 million earmark, $6.1 million recurring, $1.3 million
nonrecurring.
Lopez has called the bill “Condo 3.0,” as it builds on a pair of prior
measures lawmakers passed since the deadly June 2021 collapse of the
Champlain Towers South building in Surfside.
Those changes are long overdue, Senate members agreed ahead of a 40-0 vote.
And they could have come five years sooner, Hollywood Democratic Sen. Jason
Pizzo added.
Pizzo commended Bradley for her diligent work on the issue and for being
“incredibly intelligent” in ushering it to passage.
But it could have passed sooner, he said, if Republican lawmakers hadn’t
minded that the bill carried the name of a Democrat.
Pizzo pointed out that he filed legislation five years ago, before the
Surfside collapse, that included many of the changes HB 1021 will bring.
“It fell on deaf ears,” he said. “Until people died.”
He rattled off several other measures he carried first that largely went
ignored until it received GOP sponsorship in later years, including bans on
balloon releases and protesting in front of people’s homes.
This year, he said, he filed a career-low number of bills for consideration
because he’d given “all of the good ideas” he had to his GOP colleagues “so
they actually pass.”
“That’s where we are. It is what it is,” he said. “You guys have passed 20
bills that I (originally) filed. But people died because of partisanship.
Ninety-eight people died in my district because of partisanship.”
Bradley thanked Senate President Kathleen Passidomo for her support,
particularly because of the bill’s “significant fiscal impact” through the
expansion of DBPR’s jurisdiction. She also acknowledged Republican Sens. Jim
Boyd of Bradenton, Nick DiCeglie of St. Petersburg, Ileana Garcia of Miami
and Clay Yarborough of Jacksonville, as well as Democratic Sens. Shevrin
Jones of Miami Gardens and Rosalind Osgood of Tamarac, for their input.
“And yes, Sen. Pizzo, this builds on the very good work that you have been
doing for years,” she said. “So, thank you for the work that you have done.”
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