It all depends on your personal point of view.
From an outsider’s point of view, it seems that the motto of many legislatures is that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. As was detailed yesterday, of the 10 HOA bills introduced, only 30% passed. As a result, many of these bills are ripe to be re-introduced in future sessions. Listed below are what we think will be the prime candidates for resurrection.
SB 15-177, the Construction Defect Reform bill, represented the third year in a row that the legislature has attempted to address construction of condominiums through providing advantageous positions to builders to encourage construction. As more and more individual cities adopt their own form of construction defect reforms, the legislature will be forced to address the issue again next year. This truly does seem to be a bill you can kill, but can’t keep down.
HB 15-1259, the Rain Barrel bill, was an effort to add rain barrels to the list of protected environmentally friendly items. This bill would have prohibited associations from denying approval for the use of rain barrels in common interest communities. The bill seemed to be moving along fine, but on the final day of the session, was postponed until after the session. As the bill seemed to have little opposition, it may come back next year looking for sunnier days.
HB 15-1362 and HB 15-1376 were surprise bills introduced very late in the session (April 14 and April 22 respectively) and were geared at implementing recommendations made in the HOA information report. HB 1362 has the effect of requiring all associations, whether pre or post CCIOA, to follow the budgeting process outlined in Section 303 of CCIOA. HB 1376, in turn, would have given the Division of Real Estate flexibility to change how the annual registration fee for common interest communities is charged (either by a per door fee or a tiered system), provided for the monitoring of elections by outside election monitors, and provided for a mediation service for HOA disputes. As these were introduced so late in the session, they did not garner much attention or support. However, we expect that the introduction of these bills may have been calculated to see what type of reception they received. We expect to see some form of these bills in the future.
For more information or if you have questions, please call a Altitude Community Law attorney at 303.432.9999.
Need to start at the beginning with standardized HOA docs that respect rights and responsibilities (and the law) for builders and owners. Provide clear path for dispute resolution re defects and involve neutral parties for discovery, and insurers early. Keep litigation as the incentive but find means for settlement that limit large contingency fees for legal and duplication of expert costs. Enforce better oversight and best practice by construction managers, inspectors and subcontractors. Improve funding to include realistic dues structures and reserve funding for HOA’s from the onset. Hard to legislate away bad behavior…may be status quo and market will provide natural course to weed out the bad actors??
As I have stated, there will be no end to the meddling and micro-managing of our industry, something about which legislators know little or nothing. They do know the information that high-pressure lobbying tactics provide, and they do know where their financial interests lie, and those are the 2 components that result in legislation. Nothing else seems to matter. The problems in our industry will never be truly addressed or resolved until legislation is passed mandating arbitration in all cases of CIC disputes (except for collection matters). This is the cost-effective and expedited manner in which to enforce state laws and governing documents. Until that happens, boards will continue to do as they please, laws, documents and owners be damned.
@ Joe Felice. I don’t see how that is an answer. Arbitration is just as expensive as lawsuits and captures the owner in the same catch 22. Maybe make disputes applicable under small claims court or something like that. California has that for records requests 9the bugaboo of many an owner) and it works–it makes the board subject to a penalty for non compliance–$500. We things that make a board responsible, not additional burdens on the owners. ~HOA Warrior