SO WHAT MAY BE IN STORE FOR 2020?

By Eric Glazer, Esq.

Published January 6, 2020

 

Hope everyone had both a happy and a healthy new year.  I also hope you are all well rested and are now ready to stand-up and protect yourselves by demanding new laws that benefit our community associations.  For the next few weeks, we will let you know what community association law bills have been filed in either The Florida House of Representatives or The Florida Senate.  We will also keep track of their progress and tell you whether or not we believe they deserve a thumbs up or down.  Let’s start:

 

HB 0137 (REPRESENTATIVE CORTES): Changes the HOA recall statute to allow directors to be recalled if 60% of the people who are living in the HOA vote to remove the current board or board member, rather than a majority vote of all of the owners.  This bill is dead on arrival and will go nowhere.  Just because someone does not live at the HOA does not mean that their vote is worth less than other owners who happen to live at the condominium.  The recall statute is definitely broken, but this is not the way to fix it.

 

HB 0233 (REPRESENTATIVE CORTES): This bill would require the parties to attend arbitration, should pre-suit mediation fail.  This bill is also DOA.  As if the cost of pursuing a dispute is not expensive enough, this bill would require the parties to first mediate and then arbitrate before you finally get to tell your story to a judge.  Under this bill, it would take you up to 90 days to get to a mediator, then several months or more in arbitration.  Think of the costs and expenses.  Bad idea.

 

CS/HB 476: 718.129 Law enforcement vehicles.—For condominiums, HOAs and co-ops, provides that an association may not prohibit a law enforcement officer, as defined in s. 943.10(1), who is a unit owner, or who is a tenant, guest, or invitee of a unit owner, from parking his or her assigned law enforcement vehicle in an area where the unit owner, or the tenant, guest, or invitee of the unit owner, otherwise has a right to park.  This bill is already breezing through The Florida Legislature and I see no obstacles in sight.  This removes the fight about whether or not a law enforcement vehicle is a “commercial vehicle” that is typically prohibited.  I think this is a great bill that is long over due.

 

Stay tuned……we will update you throughout the legislative session.


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About HOA & Condo Blog

Eric Glazer Eric Glazer graduated from the University of Miami School of Law in 1992 after receiving a B.A. from NYU. He has practiced community association law for more than 2

decades and is the owner of Glazer and Sachs, P.A. a seven attorney law firm with offices in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando and satellite offices in Naples, Fort Myers and Tampa.

 

Since 2009, Eric has been the host of Condo Craze and HOAs, a weekly one hour radio show that airs at noon each Sunday on 850 WFTL.

   

See: www.condocrazeandhoas.com.

   

He is the first attorney in the State of Florida that designed a course that certifies condominium residents as eligible to serve on a condominium Board of Directors and has now certified more than 10,000 Floridians all across the state. He is certified as a Circuit Court Mediator by The Florida Supreme Court and has mediated dozens of disputes between associations and unit owners. Eric also devotes significant time to advancing legislation in the best interest of Florida community association members.


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