Open Records on Website

Here is my controversial response. CC&R and Articles are public documents. By laws are HOA owned if exists. It is not the responsibility of the HOA to provide. A few states require sellers to provide buyers the documents. Otherwise it is on the buyer to get a copy as they are public. By laws only when HOA member.

Having the documents available or provided by the HOA in various forms gives impression of the HOA responsibility. This then opens up the argument of potential lawsuit because angry violating member threatens to sue over claims not received. How many times we hear that?

Another part of this proposed legislation is that you have to provide every existing owner and new buyer with the governing documents. The state law already says you have to provide a copy to new buyers if you are the seller, but his rule would put the responsibility on the HOA also. The HOA will have to send a link to the website to existing owners who have opted in for electronic communication or a letter and a copy of the documents to those who have not. I'm not clear if that is a yearly thing or just once after the legislation becomes law.

The other part of this legislation is a records retention policy. Most records will now have to be kept for at least 7 years. The attorney suggested that every HOA have an official records retention policy posted on their website.

We had the governing documents on the public side.

Realtors loved it as perspective buyers could review the documents and make an informed decision on the purchase.
It also limited the number of offers that were rescinded after a reading of the documents.

I actually do agree with Melissa's comments, up to a point. In general, I think that the person or entity that has a legal obligation to maintain a document or information should be the ones required to provide it (or make it available). It's because of control. For instance, micromanagers want to make the decisions but hold employees accountable when their decisions cause problems - this doesn't work because often the employees don't have the tools they need to make things happen a particular way.

So back to HOAs. If an entity has no control over the information and its accuracy, they should not be legally obligated to provide it.

The HOA maintains the association's financial records, so the HOA should be the ones required to make them available.

CC&Rs are recorded, meaning the county recorder is the one who should provide these documents - and many have websites where the public can download them. If the HOA provides them on their website, that's a convenience. But what happens if the HOA's website has incomplete or out of date CC&Rs - can it be held legally accountable if people make decisions based on this inaccurate information? ANd if the HOA's website has a disclaimer saying essentially "use at your own risk", what sort of message does that send?

HOAs that have a reliable supply of responsible and capable board members and community managers can maybe maintain complete and accurate information on their websites. But what about all of the rest of them? I'm guessing that there are a lot more of the latter than the former.

I think I've talked myself out of supporting the legislation...

I back the proposed Fl legislation at least as far as records go. Why? Because denial of records is one of the leading complaints owners have.

Boards are overworked and underpaid. But my sympathy for these volunteers stops the instant they deny records to which owners are lawfully entitled. Transparency is everything. The agreement on access to records is universal, every single state's legislature having passed legislation requiring that certain records must be available for inspection, at no charge (or nominal charge), upon request.

I saw that the proposed criminal penalty (for denial of records) has a high bar for prosecutors to meet. I am not worried so much about it.

I say show everything to anyone at any time.

Just want to chime in: there are two aspects to this. 1. Keeping up to date with all of the documents, and 2. Maintaining and updating the usernames and email addresses and passwords etc that make the portal “resident-only”. Even when properly implemented, #2 can require some significant effort.

Bill

Ironic enough the CC&Rs and Articles are not records of the HOA per se. They are records filed to form the corporation and then restrictions on use of property. They are the documents filed to form the HOA and be operational.

The reason they are public is to avoid lawsuits. Who wants to be sued for not providing a copy? Having them as public means no one is responsible except the buyer.

The states whom make it the seller responsibility is just an attempt to shield the HOA from a lawsuit.

If you are not responsible for providing them then you will win a lawsuit.

Talk about preventative action a HOA can take to protect itself...

why do any of these documents need to be password protected? 99% of membership doesn't want to read them. Why would anyone else want to???

I've thought about that too, Wendy. But our Bylaws, Articles of Incorporation, Election Rules are all on the protected site. One reason why I don't think they need to be on the public site is that then it gets overly cluttered with things that renters and perspective buyers don't care about. At present our public site is petty. "clean" with info provided.

To be clear to BillD, the protected site is not for "residents," but for Owners only. Residents can be owners or renters. 25% of our Owners live off site, so are not residents.

I worry about the association Membership list being on the protected site. because it DOES change frequently. Even with onsite mgmt. staff, updating it frequently might be lead to errors. So, I think following statute and the Association (via mgt. in our case would provide such list within x day to ownrs who proprely request it. This gives the PM time to make sure the list is up to date. I do think I recall a caveat when they sent out the list that there might be missing data.

Many people say this. Then when they are asked a few questions, they admit they got the documents.

I am posting to try to keep the thread clean and not let your latest gross falsehood sit here without being rejected.

You are going to spout whatever false news and false information. It's so important for HOA/COA members to see the illegal nonsense some directors pull.

Melissa often has written that she does not read her state's statutes because she's not a lawyer. But HOA Law in Alabama was changed eff. 1/16. Since Melissa was President waaaay before that, she does not know that now in her state and in her very own HOA (formed after 1/16?) the HOA MUST provide the governing docs to members AND "potential purchasers!" Or, the HOA must direct them to the public site location of the records.

And despite Melissa's insistence innumerable times that bylaws are "not public" records, apparently they ARE in Alabama and must be filed with the appropriate gov. entity. There are, in fact, many, many documents to which potential buyers may have access.

Melissa also frequently insists that tenants have numerous rights. In this same HOA legislation, though, we see that HOAs may actually fine not ONLY owners but renters as well! So she needs to stop saying: "You must hold owners [sic] feet to the ground [sic]."

In case Melissa is interested in pulling herself out of a pre-2010 twilight zone, she might take a look at https://www.sos.alabama.gov/business-entities/homeowners-associations HB241: For HOAs formed 1/16 or later. Sec, 14 (a) is useful.

The CC&Rs and bylaws don't - which is why Tim said they can be in public area of the website.

Other parts of the website can include information that's specific to an individual: current account info, history of violations, history of service requests, etc. Some of this needs to be kept confidential, and the rest of it is none of anyone else's business. Hence the individual logins/passwords. Also, whenever you allow others to post anything on a website, even if it's only sending requests to the board or manager, there is always the possibility of misuse. Associations have to have a Terms of Service agreement that's enforced, which means you need to have a record of a user's activity on the site in order to prove that they've violated the Terms.

Which reminds me, any community with a website should talk to their insurance agent to make sure the association is protected against liability resulting from people's use of the information on the website. This isn't the sort of thing most people think about when they create websites, but website insurance is a thing.

Only members are allowed to attend meetings but our board posts minutes of meetings in the public area. But they don't post the minutes of all meetings. They spend $800./year on the website and can't even post all the minutes in the correct place.

Sorry my most recent post belongs in a different thread. ut it' e interested to see if Melissa finally admits that in AL, HOA bylaws are PUBLIC records. I agree that they're not in every state.