Article Courtesy of Florida Politics

By Jesse Scheckner

Published  June 22, 2024

The measure includes a $7.4M earmark — $6.1M recurring, $1.3M nonrecurring — to pay for added staffing and enforcement.

Unscrupulous and malfeasant condo board members and associations that for years skirted Florida law through loopholes in state statutes may soon have a tougher time getting away with it.

Gov. Ron DeSantis just signed HB 1021, which on July 1 will overhaul state laws governing condo oversight and management. The measure, which the Legislature passed unanimously in March, is meant to strengthen oversight of condo buildings and their boards, making them more accountable for maintenance, repairs, reserves and recordkeeping.

Miami Republican Rep. Vicki Lopez, the legislation’s House sponsor, nicknamed it “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.

Among other things, it creates new educational requirements for condo managers and mandates that building records must be available online to owners. The measure 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 already on the books.

To pay for added DBPR operations and staff to enforce the law, the measure includes a $7.4 million earmark — $6.1 million in recurring funds, $1.3 million nonrecurring.

In November, former state Condominium Ombudsman Spencer Henning outlined to lawmakers the ways Florida how wrongdoers on condo and homeowners association boards evade punishment or removal, rendering DBPR and other agencies under whose purview residential collectives fall “toothless” in holding them accountable.

Lopez said her measure was designed to correct that.

“We recognized that we needed to ensure DBPR has sufficient resources and jurisdiction in order to regulate condominiums in Florida. This bill is a pretty big piece of legislation that is going to address so many of the concerns we heard from both the community and a pair of reports (on the matter) from 2007 and 2016,” she said. “Many of those concerns are still relevant today, which is kind of frightening.”

Fleming Island Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley worked with Lopez on HB 1021 last summer and carried a companion bill in the Legislature’s upper chamber with co-sponsorship from Miami Democratic Sen. Jason Pizzo.

While Pizzo supported the bill by sponsorship and vote, he criticized it as tragically tardy. Ahead of a final Senate vote on March 6, he noted that he had filed legislation five years ago, before the Surfside condo collapse, that included many of the changes HB 1021 will bring.

That measure (SB 610) received a pair of divided panel votes before stalling out at its final committee stop. Its House analog went unheard.

Pizzo blamed members of the Florida GOP whose members now control supermajorities in both chambers.

“It fell on deaf ears,” he said, “Ninety-eight people died in my district because of partisanship.”