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SOME ELECTION CONFUSION MAY SOON GET CLEARED UP
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published February 26, 2018
Several months ago, I blogged about confusion
that exists in the 2017 condo crime bill. That new statute
states that:
A board member may not serve more than
four consecutive 2-year terms, unless approved by an affirmative
vote of two-thirds of the total voting interests of the
association or unless there are not enough eligible candidates
to fill the vacancies on the board at the time of the vacancy.
I have been asked a
hundred times already if a board member who serves only one year
terms can get elected for an unlimited amount of one year
terms. Suppose this is now their 10th consecutive
year? Can they run again for a one year term? The answer is
clearly YES, even though the clear intent of the statute was to
give someone else a chance to get elected after 8 years.
HB 841 which so far is
breezing through The Florida Legislature is now being amended to
state:
A board member may not serve more than 8
consecutive years, unless approved by an affirmative vote of
unit owners representing two-thirds of all votes cast in the
election or unless there are not enough eligible candidates to
fill the vacancies on the board at the time of the vacancy.
That clarifies that.
Then, the question becomes how
will the law be applied? This law is set to take effect July 1st,
2018. That means that it applies to any election that takes
place after July 1st, 2018. That means that if
someone is running for the board, and this would be their 9th
consecutive year or more on the board, they would need
two-thirds of all votes cast in the election or can only get on
the board if there are not enough eligible candidates. This is
not a retroactive application of the law. A retroactive
application of the law would be to AUTOMATICALLY remove someone
from the board on July 1st, 2018 if they are in their
9th year or longer.
Is this statute a good idea?
Does it make sense to prevent people from serving on a board
that often finds it impossible to get non paid volunteers? Even
if the board member is fantastic and the owners want him or her
to stay? At a presentation I gave last week, one member of the
audience said that this new law is great because the truth is,
many people would like to run for the board, but they don’t want
to run against someone who has already served for a decade or
more, as they know they will most likely lose. This law gets
more people involved.
What do you guys think?
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About
HOA & Condo Blog
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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
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decades and is the owner of Glazer
and Associates, 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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