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“SELLING” OFFICIAL RECORDS – BIG BUSINESS?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published
May 13, 2016
“SELLING” official records to owners has always been big
business for the so-called service-providers. Remember the
horror-stories about outrageous demands by CAMs for record
requests.
When we passed
H7119 in 2013 we had hoped that this kind of
“blackmail” would stop since the wording of this bill made it
very clear that owners have the right to inspect the records in
question for FREE and use their own devices to make
copies of these records.
But it has become very obvious that neither some community
association managers nor some law firms are interested in
following the wording of the Florida statutes – and continue to
“sell” the official records to owners making record requests. We
hear excuses like: You have to go to the association attorney’s
office for the inspection and since we have records only in
digital form we need to print it out and you – as the owner –
has to pay for the copies. In my opinion these kind of
service-providers are nutcases who knowingly and willfully
ignore the Florida statutes.
Let’s face it: If the requested records are only available in
digital version, they should ask the owner to give them a
USB-stick. Transferring the files to the stick is much less
time-consuming than printing the records – and doesn’t cost a
dime.
But that’s not what these CAMs and attorneys have in mind. They
rather want to pocket some extra cash – and they know that many
owners are not familiar with the laws and rather pay instead of
being harassed – or having the records withheld until they paid
the “ransom.”. Any “service-provider” trying to circumvent the
laws should lose his/her license or get punished with a severe
fine – until they learn to follow laws and rules.
These service-providers should not be allowed to use the owners
as their private cash cows.
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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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