Article
Courtesy of Florida Politics
By Jesse Scheckner
Published January 27, 2024
These changes have ‘been needed for many years,’ the
bill’s sponsor said.
Florida’s “toothless” laws for handling condo complaints and delinquent
recordkeeping could gain some serious bite through legislation now advancing
in the Legislature.
Members of the Senate Regulated Industries Committee voted unanimously to
advance a 105-page bill (SB
1178) designed to crack down on unscrupulous or neglectful
boards, inform unit owners and make it easier to punish wrongdoers.
It’s the latest statewide proposal aimed at boosting condo safety following
the deadly June 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo in
Surfside. Lawmakers passed measures in 2022 and last year to shore up
deficiencies in building maintenance and the oversight and accountability of
boards.
SB 1178 and its similar companion in the House (HB
1021) are the “next necessary step,” said the bill’s sponsor,
Fleming Island Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley.
“It’s one that’s been needed for many years,” she said. “We have grand jury
reports, House Select Committee reports going back more than a decade. We
had a great panel in this committee that was illuminating in both the scope
and depth of some of the concerns that are happening in associations.”
Bradley referred to a Nov. 14 discussion on the efficacy and enforceability
of Florida’s condo laws, particularly those concerning condo boards and the
management companies some hire to oversee operations and upkeep.
Spencer Hennings, who served as the state’s condominium ombudsman for about
three years until April 2023, said Florida’s existing laws rendered his
office within the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR)
a “toothless tiger” when it came to holding malfeasant board members
accountable.
The result, he said, is that unit owners “basically have no rights, (and if
board members are) stealing money, if they’re concealing records (or) doing
something nefarious, good luck asking them to step down (or forcing them to
do so by legal action).”
Bradley’s bill, which would overhaul Chapters 718 and 719 of Florida
Statutes concerning condo and cooperative associations, is meant to fix that
and many other issues.
Among other things, it would:
-
Expand jurisdiction of DBPR to enforce state condo
and condo association laws and require the Department to refer suspected
cases of fraud, theft or embezzlement to law enforcement.
-
Enhance access to condo records by requiring all
associations with 25 units or more to maintain a website through which
owners can access official records. The current threshold is 150 units.
-
Create criminal penalties for board members who
commit fraudulent voting activity or solicit or accept kickbacks.
-
Create criminal penalties for repeated and willful
violations related to the inspection of records and for refusing to
provide records in order to escape criminal prosecution.
-
Establish new safeguards for associations that invest
their reserves, a practice Bradley said is already allowed “but for
which there are no guardrails.”
-
Require condo association boards to meet at least
quarterly and provide in meeting notices copies of all contracts under
consideration at the meeting in question.
-
Create disclosure requirements for condo management
firms.
-
Require board members to satisfy stricter education
requirements. Members are mandated now only to avow and check a box to
say they’ve read the association bylaws. The proposed change would
compel them to undergo initial and annual education, which Bradley said
would enable them to “better fulfill their fiduciary obligations.”
-
Allow boards to secure lines of credit to fund
state-required milestone repairs or to meet the reserve funding schedule
recommended by their structural integrity reserve study.
-
Clarifies obligations of an association and owners
regarding hurricane protections.
-
Revises Florida’s anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits
against public participation) laws to provide that association funds
cannot be used to support defamation and libel actions against owners.
-
Correct a “glitch” in the most recently passed condo
safety bill (SB 154) to guarantee that unit owners can obtain a copy of
a building’s structural integrity reserve study within 45 days of its
completion.
Florida law already requires condo associations to allow
unit owners to vote electronically; however, they must first request to do
so through a written letter. On Monday, Tamarac Democratic Sen. Rosalind
Osgood proffered an amendment to enable them to make the request
electronically as well.
Bradley accepted, calling it a “good, friendly amendment.”
Representatives for the Chief Executive Officers of Management Companies,
Florida Realtors Association and AARP Florida all signaled support for the
bill, which Lopez dubbed “Condo 3.0” in a discussion with Florida Politics
early this month.
“We recognized that we need to ensure DBPR has sufficient resources and
jurisdiction in order to regulate condominiums in Florida. This bill … 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.”
SB 1178, which Democratic Miami Sen. Jason Pizzo is cosponsoring, has two
more committee stops before reaching the Senate floor. HB 1021, cosponsored
by Miami Republican Rep. Juan Porras, awaits the first of three committees
to which House Speaker Paul Renner assigned it.
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