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DO THESE BILLS SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published February 16, 2024
Eric asked our readers on Monday: WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?
Maybe the Florida Legislature is actually trying to solve
minimum a part of your problem.
The Florida Legislature is seriously working on a myriad of
community association bills that actually would create some
teeth. One bill (HB
1021) would approve a $7.1M payment to the Division
of Condominiums, Timeshares and Mobile Homes, supposedly to hire
60 new employees to enforce the statutes, not just a few
selected parts of it.
The two important HOA House bills (HB
1203 and
HB 1243) have suddenly gotten companion bills in the
Senate (SB
7044 +
SB 7046) and the Senate is still working on SB 426,
a bill that would create a
Condominium Fraud
Investigation Pilot Program.
Yes, there have been some amendments to the originally filed
bills, but in all reality the bills still create lots of very
owner-friendly provisions.
What really disturbs me at the committee hearings: CAI lobbyist
Travis Moore is always waiving his speaking rights in support of these bills,
only Mark Anderson, the CAM lobbyist, testified in opposition to
HB 1203 at the committee hearing of the House Commerce
Committee. Even the
normal suspects representing the Florida BAR – Peter Dunbar and
William Sklar – are nowhere to be seen at these committee
hearings.
Are they playing their normal games behind closed doors?
Let’s just hope that our legislators finally realize that the
community association system is doing a lot of harm to Florida’s
homeowner and unit-owners and serious changes, especially in
regards to enforcement, have to be made.
Let’s not forget: It’s election year – and more than 50% of all
registered Florida voters are living in community associations.
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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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