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CHARGES FOR RECORD REQUESTS: A GET-RICH-QUICK
SCHEME FOR CAMS?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published
March 29, 2013
I
often get copies of letters, sent to me by owners, demanding
outrageous charges to just inspect records. Just recently an
owner who asked to inspect financial records for the years 2012
– 2013 received a letter from the
CAM
of his community telling him to pay upfront $936. Make no
mistake, the owner didn’t ask for piles of copies, just for an
inspection of these records. The
CAM
asked to be paid for “preparation of records” (shouldn’t
the records to be stored in an easy-to-access manner in the
first place?) and “estimated time for supervising the record
inspection.” The hourly rate demanded by the
CAM
was even more outrageous – and would have even made an
attorney proud!
We
are seeing this pattern more and more often. Even board members
asking for records to do their fiduciary duty as officers of the
association have been asked to pay such fees.
To
me it seems that this wrong interpretation of FS
720.303(5)(c) is
often used to deter owners and “disliked” board members from
seeing the public records of the association. Who in his right
mind wants to pay $100 to inspect the minutes of the board
meetings of last year AND $0.50 for each page to get hard
copies of these minutes?
Make
no mistake: CAMs asking for these “record request fees” are
anyway on the clock of the association, getting paid by the
owners in the first place. I honestly doubt that the sponsor of
this provision in the bill had in mind to create a
get-rich-quick-scheme for CAMs. Maybe it was just poor wording
– as used in many other paragraphs we see in FS720 – that
made CAMs think that they are allowed to charge outrageous fees
from owners.
The
allowed charges were clearly intended for making hard copies of
requested records – nothing else – and even that shouldn’t
be allowed.
In order to avoid these “costly” misunderstandings in the
future, our HOA Reform Bills S
596, S
580 and H
7119 will remove these disputed provisions. Good
riddance!
Let’s
make no mistake, the law still allows an association to charge
$0.50 a page if the owner requests hard copies to be made of the
records requested. Considering that all the OFFICE
stores charge less than a dime a page for copies, there is still
a good profit margin for the association (
CAM
) for making copies.
We always hear the complaints from boards and CAMs that there
are these “nasty” owners who are permanently requesting
records. Admittedly: Yes, these folks exist. But make no
mistake: If the owner demands 100 pages, the allowed charge will
be $50, meaning a minimum pay of $40 for the person making the
copies. I guess lots of people would consider themselves lucky
if they make $40 an hour!
By
the way, we live in a time where computers run our lives. Any
association should add a website to their service offers to the
community members, with all the “public” records displayed
on a password-protected (access for owners only) sub-domain. It
saves lots of money – and trouble – in the long run and more
or less ends the costly wars over record requests!
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