recording meetings - Is "not prohibited" the same as I have the right?

As to your questions, I don't think it's the same thing. I'm not an attorney, but as I read it, the law you cite says the STATE does not prohibit recordings, but that statement does not prohibit a BOARD from making a policy as to who can record its meetings, if anyone.

Eric, I'm wondering what drives your concern about recording the meetings. Do your board members say or do inappropriate things that you want to expose?

This strikes me as a similar issue to the one I just posted, where a few members want routine access to board email correspondence. If a board has a record of behaving badly, then I can see why members would want to monitor all discussion. But monitoring, especially when done from a standpoint of suspicion, can interfere with frank discussion among board members and throw sand in the gears. (That may or may not be a good thing.)

If enough members agree with your wish to make your own recording of Board meetings, then there may be another route you can take, perhaps starting with a petition. I don't think the law you cite is going to help you.

Yes, my board members say and do inappropriate things that I want to expose. The way the board behaves now contradicts the criticism current board members gave the previous board. (And I get on my knees and pray... we don't get fooled again. Meet the new board. Same as the old board.) I can use quotes from back when the current board members criticized the previous board as ammo against the current board. A great irony is that the current secretary asked me 14 months ago to look into if she could legally record meetings because she didn't like how the previous secretary was writing the minutes. Another board member asked me to put up the bulletin board announcement that meetings would be recorded. Now they say that quotes are being taken out of context, though they haven't cited specific examples.
The second reason to record meetings is it actually is a service to homeowners who could not attend meetings to be able to listen later. I for instance would like to hear what was said at the meeting I missed. A lot of important details are lost in the minutes.


Thanks for mentioning e-mail correspondence! Our board relies heavily on e-mail to discuss issues, a violation of Oregon's open meeting law. I am way in favor of letting the homeowners monitor the board's email communications. The board considers information privately that other homeowners can't see / hear, so can't dispute. Opinions are expressed privately that homeowners would find useful when it comes time to controlling the only thing the homeowners can: electing directors. Issues are disposed of in private discussions and never make it to open session meetings. The issues that do make it to open session are hardly discussed before they are voted on. By that time, the directors all seem to have agreed to vote the same, so it is hard to decide which directors to elect based on their identical voting records. Even when I set up a committee forum so there was no inconvenience to allowing homeowners to subscribe or unsubscribe to the discussion, the committee members still preferred to operate by e-mail outside the forum. Even within the committee, some members did not get copied on all e-mails. That can't happen at face to face open meetings.

One more thing, I do not believe that being something being 'not prohibited' is the same as 'you have a right to...'.

I disagree. "Not prohibited" means there is no legal basis for the association to prevent you from recording the meeting. Technically, it's more like you have the privilege than you have the right.

Does Oregon have any statutes regarding HOA meetings?

Eric:

The state has already laid down some of the rules of conduct for the board. ORS 94.640(8)(a) states in part that "All meetings of the board of directors of the association shall be open to owners." Therefore, you cannot be excluded from the meetings.

"I WILL PURSUE ANY AND ALL LEGAL REMEDIES AVAILABLE TO ME" means: I have not yet bothered to consult an attorney and I have no clue as to what the law says but I am sure I can intimidate you if I make threats that I cannot possibly afford to carry out.

If the board member does not wish to be recorded her options are to keep her yap shut or to resign. The state of Oregon has already decided that you have permission to record the meetings and that law is not subject to the board member's approval.

I previously wrote: "My reading of our Bylaws is that the resolutions are supposed to be approved at homeowners meetings, but they never have been."
To be more specific, the one new resolution since I became a homeowner was presented as a handout at a board of directors meeting. The homeowners had no input into the resolution and were not given the opportunity to vote on it. Only the directors could have known before that meeting that they were working on a resolution or buying one from the HOA attorney.
The agenda for the next board meeting includes "New business: - New Resolution"
My guess is it will be about preventing me from audio recording the board meetings. The HOA attorney wrote a resolution for a neighboring HOA that sets a $250 fine per meeting for video recording of the meetings.


Recently I got a copy of an e-mail discussion where the chairman's message included "My vote is no." Technically the chairman shouldn't vote at all except to break a tie, but more importantly they disposed of the committee proposal by e-mail discussion just hours before the scheduled in-person board meeting. The proposal was not mentioned at all at the physical meeting.
Also I have been copied directly on a few e-mail messages where the whole board is participating and it involved me. When I pointed out they should not be having their private meeting, the chairman wrote "allow me to clarify the points the complete email trail describes. There was no board meeting since no action is/was required. I copied the Board in on the discussion so they were aware of the owner’s question and our email discussion. I included the Building Committee so they know what is going on as well. It is our (BoD’s) right to discuss by phone or email without calling a meeting if no action is taken. Strictly informative and discussion based."
I never get a response when I cite actual Oregon laws like the law about open meetings. Well I might get a response but it is a criticism of my character, not a response to the specifics of the law.


Understood. I'm just sayin' I won't find out about important details if I miss the meeting and only have the minutes, no recording.


So maybe hypocrisy is OK and I should just not worry about it? The majority of the homeowners don't have the time or interest to monitor the HOA activities. Maybe they appreciate that a watchdog organization such as myself is monitoring the situation and doing some reporting. Aren't you glad that someone is monitoring on your government's activities and reporting waste, abuse, etc.? Would we be better off without those pesky news reporters and watchdog organizations?


I was on a committee but resigned when it was clear that the work I was doing would be wasted, I had no real influence, and I could only become a scapegoat. Other people on other committees resigned to the point that we need to acknowledge that there really aren't any committees. I am currently on a second committee that has never had a meeting despite my requests, even though the director on the committee gives committee reports at the board meetings. I haven't resigned, just to prove a point that committees are puppets of the board. At first I was "in" with the new board but had a falling out after I started pointing out their improper use of executive session, suppression of homeowner to homeowner communication, the same old election trickery to preserve incumbents... just a litany of contradictions to where they previously claimed to stand for before they got on the board.

It's not all bad news. There is one director that broke with the pack and voted no on the audio recording ban. Another board member resigned who seemed to remain true to the principles I share. He took a lot of heat from the other directors but the regular homeowners never saw that because it was done in private.

Understood. But the committee is just a sock puppet if a director is giving committee reports without any committee input or meeting. The committee is currently just the director, his wife, and me.
At my HOA the proposed amendment to the bylaws has to be approved by a majority of the board of directors before the homeowners can vote on it. But thanks for trying to find a solution. Amusing sig you have.

MaryC14, a lawyer will call me tomorrow that I found from your link. Legal wrangle - yes. I am on a collision course with the BOD at the next BOD meeting. The BOD has a draft resolution written by "our" law firm setting a $400 fine per occurrence for recording a board meeting. The resolution does not address the law I cited to them about recording private meetings. It only cites the BOD's right to adopt rules of order.

The Oregon Washington Community Association Managers (OWCAM) website has some feature presentation videos from their meetings at http://www.owcam.org/program_media.html . In one of the videos...
Program: December 6th, 2011 | Members Meeting
Subject: Oregon & Washington 2011 Legislative Updates
...the first speaker says
"We had some opposition this year and so some of the things that we wanted to get adopted were not adopted... We had some legislation regarding tape recording meetings... Unfortunately those things did not pass."
On of the lawyer lobbyists the speaker mentioned is known to discourage directors from recording meetings. So I assume their legislative action committee failed to push through a ban on tape recording for year 2012. (Woo!)

Here is the resolution:


I found out that the same law firm that wrote this resolution knows full well they cannot ban audio and video recording. They have been lobbying the state legislature to allow a ban on recording, but so far they have not succeeded. They write these resolutions anyway to give the board of directors what they want: something that says the board can do what they want, and it is written by a lawyer so it must be true. BUT IT'S NOT! Our HOA dues are being squandered on this worthless "legal" document. They must figure no one is going to risk a $400 fine to challenge their rule. They are bluffing. I will start a new thread because it deserves a headline proclaiming the fact that audio video recording of HOA board meetings is legal in Oregon. It is the HOA industry such as the CAI, not the average homeowner, that is pushing to ban recording and make recordings inadmissible as evidence in court.

In AZ, state law specifies that members may make audio or video recordings of association meetings. Oregon may be out of step with the rest of us.

technically, it makes a digital recording of the audio portion of the meeting. technically, an audio recording is the shortened version of the word "audiotape" recording, and is done either on a tape, or even more archaic, on a rolling platen or cylinder, with a softened material and a stylus. Had the writers of that law wished to ban digital recording they could have plainly stated so. instead, they used "audio" which has a 100 year history of meaning "audiotape" in the eyes of the law. They were lazy. Most new statues being written today utilize the words "digital audio recording", because legislators are advised of the difference.

Granted, that is extremely thin ice, but I love thin ice. Plus, I love to tweak authority, plus, your board is dead wrong.

Tim

I would say audio recording is recording of sound, no matter the device/media used. I fail to see how any senseable person could interpert in any other way.

One of Webster definitions is:

of, relating to, or utilizing recorded sound

1) I really doubt that a stupid, quite possibly illegal rule made by an HOA would EVER get to a jury trial.

However, should it make it there, I would baffle the jury with this...

Recording Industry Ass'n of America v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc., in which the US court held that Under the language of the AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, 17 U.S.C. § 1001 et seq.), the court proceeded to determine that computer hard drives are not a digital recording, because it contained much more than "only sounds, and material, statements, or instructions incidental to those fixed sounds," thereby falling outside of the definition of a recording. Computer hard drives cannot be considered digital audio recording devices, "because their 'primary purpose' is not to make digital audio copied recordings." 17 U.S.C. § 1001(3). "[B]ecause computers are not digital audio recording devices, they are not required to comply with the SCMS requirement and thus need not send, receive, or act upon information regarding copyright and generation status."

So, if you record with an Ipod, Ipad, Cellphone, tablet, Nook, notebook, or other digital device, you might have some luck befuddling the jury pool with the very fine, technical distinction that tripped up the RIAA in their case against the Rio music stripper, ie, because the device used to record the sound is incidental to all the other features. If it were simply a device designed to record sound, you would lose. If it was designed to do other things, you have a chance. Slim chance.

Granted, your mileage will vary, this is a very weak case to cite, because it only peripherally speaks to the differences between recording devices, their purpose and intent. Very weak. Very.

Another trick would simply be to make a phone call to someone sitting at home with a recorder, and leave your phone on the entire time you are in the meeting. YOU are not recording anything. And, if you are wise, you would arrange for the recorder to be someone outside your HOA, where they have no jurisdiction.

It voids wiretapping, because the person recording IS a party to the conversation.. he is listening to you. You don't happen to be saying much, but that's because you are a quiet person. And, there is no expectation of privacy at an HOA meeting that is open to all members, one of which is you. And lastly, YOU are not having a conversation with anyone else (ie, the board member), so you are not inducing them into a taped conversation. It would legally be different if you initiated a conversation with a person, who felt they had a reasonable expectation of privacy, but at an open member board meeting, there is no such expectation, AND, you are not involved in a conversation with them, you are involved in a conversation with a person to whom you gave permission to record.