Article
Courtesy of The Islander News
By Hillard Grossman
Published January 20, 2024
It's not baseball season yet, but
Miami-Dade Rep. Vicki Lopez will be digging in at the plate
this week in Tallahassee, going to bat for condo owners like
herself in legislation that aims to level the playing field
and thwart illegalities.
"For years, condominiums have always flown under the radar,"
Lopez said Friday. "The shocking tragedy (at Surfside and
other developments) has shined a need to look at condos as a
separate residential community."
Her legislation, portions paired with Broward County Rep.
Christine Hunschofsky and Sen. Jennifer Bradley of Fleming
Island, encompasses several issues of reform that will be
introduced beginning Tuesday, when the legislative session
begins for 2024.
Among those is the proposed My Safe Florida Condominium
Pilot Program, which would make inspections and grants
available to condo associations and unit owners for
improvements similar to those funded under the existing My
Safe Florida Home Program for wind-resistant windows,
exterior doors and garage doors; secondary water barriers
for roofs; reinforcing roof-to-wall connections; and
improving the strength of roof-deck attachments.
When the legislature first considered the Home Program,
"they didn't include condominiums; they're like the
stepchild," Lopez said. So she helped develop a pilot
program "to allow what residential people need to do to get
grants for windows and doors."
She said if this piece of legislation, among some 2,500
bills possibly being brought to the floor, passes, "the
(insurance) rates will go down."
Lopez, who lives in a Brickell condo, said there are 1.5
million condo units across Florida and some 684 condo
buildings in her district, which includes Key Biscayne. Many
of these were built around the same time.
Revising Florida’s wind criteria areas is another piece of
her HB 1021 legislation, part of a 117-page document
entitled "Condo 3.0." Residents could purchase wind policies
in clearly defined areas.
Lopez said holding condo boards accountable – the "bad
actors," specifically – is also detailed in the reform bill.
"I don't want to broad-brush all condo owners as bad
people," said Lopez, who went on a "listening" tour with
Bradley last summer and held several town hall meetings,
including on Key Biscayne and Brickell. "We met a lot of
very committed (condo owners) doing the right thing. We
learned this summer about the bad actors."
One of the things they learned was that condo boards were
using (collected) money to sue condo owners for defamation,
or that kickbacks or favors were being accepted for
selecting specific vendors, or that property managers,
because the condo boards hired them, couldn't do anything
about deficiencies they witnessed.
Two crucial parts of the bill would give the Department of
Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) more
jurisdiction, if not at least the same as when the property
was first developed. This would allow them into board
meetings, which Lopez wants to expand from the required two
to four annually.
Another issue is addressing election fraud, in which, for
example, ballots are being sent by mail to condo owners in
other countries, not allowing for 14-day deadlines. She
wants to "send the right message" by treating condo election
fraud with the same penalties as other state and local
election misdeeds.
The bill also calls for condo board members to reveal
conflicts of interest so that business can't be done with
family members. "A lot of this (can be) very profitable,"
she said.
In addition, each board must provide a website in which all
documents, whether it's the insurance policy or minutes from
a meeting, could easily be accessed by residents, dropping
the threshold for such regulations from a building with 150
units to just 25 units, and providing office space for those
who do not have personal computers.
"The issues run the gamut," Lopez said. "Everybody is
highlighting condo problems."
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