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MORE
ASSOCIATION BUSINESS IN THE DARK!
By
Jan Bergemann
Published
August 1, 2014
Representative
George Moraitis’ anti-owner bill H 807 contains one sentence
that will allow board members to keep even more association
business in the dark – hidden from the view of owners.
FS
718.112(2)(c) Members of the board of administration may use
e-mail as a means of communication but may not cast a vote on an
association matter via e-mail.
Let’s
make no mistake: This provision was pushed by certain law-firms
in order to protect some of their dictatorial clients who they
want to keep in power in order to gain more billing hours.
The
sponsors behind the bill knew full well that case law stops
owners from requesting copies of e-mails between board members.
Now they even made it legal for board members to conduct
association business behind closed doors with no means for
owners to even know what the board is up to.
Association
business in the Sunshine? Are you kidding? This one sentence
kills all the efforts that we saw in the last few years to make
association business more open for owners. What good are all the
provisions that allow owners to inspect and get copies of all
the official documents? These provisions are now useless,
because Representative George Moraitis (R-Distr.91) – most
likely the most anti-owner legislator
Florida
has seen in the last 20 years – pushed this one sentence
through the legislature.
And
the law-firms behind this bill are all happy: They succeeded in
hiding more association business from the “nosy” eyes of
owners who are interested in seeing where their money is being
wasted.
This
bill made it legal for board members to hide their actions in
their “private” computers, even if the business conducted on
these computers is anything but private!
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Jan Bergemann is president of Cyber Citizens For Justice,
Florida
's largest state-wide property owners' advocacy group.
CCFJ works on legislation to help owners living in
community
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associations. He moved to
Florida
in 1995 - hoping to retire. He moved into a HOA, where the
developer cheated the homeowners and used the association dues
for his own purposes. End of retirement!
CCFJ was born in the year 2000, when some owners met in
Tallahassee
- finding out that power is only in numbers. Bergemann was a
member of Governor Jeb Bush's HOA Task force in 2003/2004.
The organization has two websites to inform interested
Florida
homeowners and condo owners:
News Website: http://www.ccfj.net/.
Educational Website: http://www.ccfjfoundation.net/.
We think that only owners can really represent owners, since all
service providers surely have a different interest! We are
trying to create owner-friendly laws, but the best laws are
useless without enforcement. And enforcement is totally lacking
in
Florida
!
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