Establishing a Finance Committee

I am a volunteer in my HOA community. I have been pushing to establish a Finance Committee but have been facing some resistance. I could not find any language on committees in the bylaws. Are there general HOA laws that I can use to my favor to establish a new committee?

Also, is a board member allowed to chair a committee?

Thank you.

If you can find Maryland law that governs not-for-profit corporations it will address appointment of committees, am almost sure.

EH,
We decided to allow a Finance Committee last year. We had 2 Volunteers that we suspected were not sure if the Board was doing the right thing with our Finances. We had 1 of our BODs join the committee to watch over the committee. We made sure that they only had access to the monthly Bills and the reserve information.

We have 400+ single family homes and a Budget of $970,000 annually. The Board watches our exspenes very closely and felt like we had a good handle on what we were spending our dollars on.

One lady who is very detailed decided to take on the reserve funding and found many glaring mistakes. We had items that the Boards over the years did not know what they were but continued to fund. She spent the time to break down every item including taking pictures and lay out exactly what it was and if it was funded correctly. She basically did a reserves study with a paragraph or two explaining exactly how many of each item we have and what it does for the community. The bottom line is we were able reallocate funds and delete items that were not needed. She worked with the Company that does our reserve studies and together they were able to change our funding % from 60+ to 70+

If you can find Volunteers that are willing to take on the task and have the time it takes to dig in to the reserves I am sure that you will see benefits of the committee.

Good Luck
Mark

Our docs call for all committees to be chaired by a member of the BOD.

On our Finance Committee, all members are board members so that full access is granted to all documentation. The finance committee is comprised of members with relevant skills and experience - obviously we are lucky to have such members on the board.

MarkM19,

That is excellent that through a committee, your communities reserves were fine-tuned.

Just curious, is there a particular reason why your BOD will only give select financial information to the committee?

I found a law in Maryland (pasted below), that to me indicates that any financial information can be disclosed upon a written request. Additionally, I was apart of a former HOA which provided the Finance Committee with every single piece of financial information available, right down to the delinquency report.

HB137: Association Books and Records. This legislation requires associations to provide homeowners copies of books and records, including board minutes, financial statements and employee salaries within 21 days of receiving a written request. The charge for copying and mailing books and records may not exceed the amount charged by Maryland courts (50 cents per page for copies made by a court clerk and 25 cents per page for copies made by a customer.) This took effect October 1, 2009.

Jeanne - Thank you for clarifying that.

Since you are a MD resident as well, do you know of any HOA websites/resources that you could recommend to me?

EH,
The main reason why we limited the information is because he have a collection policy that we implemented that is seems to be working. Since they were not elected by the members we did not think that it would be wise to share the dirty underside of every HOA which are the deadbeats.

Mark