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Homeowners Association Legislation Back On The Table
By Bill McLaughlin
If you thought it was gone, think again. The Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, S1608, which supporters say will protect homeowners association members but which many condominium owners see as onerous potential financial abuse, is still alive in the state Senate.
In fact, two meetings - October 16 at 10 a.m.
and November 13 at 1 p.m., both in Trenton - will give the public one last chance at swaying committee members.
In the past, senior citizens rode the bus to Trenton to have similar legislation defeated. The Senate has stifled a vote on past bills that would appoint an ombudsman to have direct oversight in matters affecting condominium, co-operatives and other communities whose domiciles share a common interest. In others words, homeowners associations. The most objectionable facet for many opponents is a tariff to be paid by each association unit owner to fund the new state bureaucracy that would be created.
Supporters of the legislation say an impartial overseer is necessary in some cases where a small clique takes over the financial and leadership roles within a homeowners association, ruling without transparency in their operations. The legislation, and the ombudsman it would provide, would offer protection to residents living in such an association.
Opponents, however, say the answer in that case would be a call to the police and hiring a lawyer to bring suit.
In March, the state assembly passed a bill by 55-14 that closely mirrored the state Senate version, which was introduced March 3. The bill is co-sponsored by Shirley K. Turner (DMercer) and Ron L. Rice (D-Essex) and has lingered in committee along with at least three other versions being bandied about.
"The word we got from (Rice) is there's going to be a bill," said Manchester resident Fred Lund, assistant treasurer of the Leisure Village West Civic Club. "It's a tax targeted directly toward unit owners only - not all the homeowners in the state. It's against one group of people only, and that alone makes it wrong."
Lund said he became intrigued by the wheeling and dealing by legislators in the decade since this bill was first proposed. Although it has never reached the floor of the state Senate, this year looks like a different outcome entirely.
In doing research, he stumbled across a long-forgotten study commissioned by the state Senate that would forever imprint the crux of the argument being weighed here: The report, commissioned by the Assembly housing sub-committee in 1999, decided there were points in support and in opposition to the proposed legislation and that many New Jerseyans had strong feelings about the impact of any law that would result.
"I was astonished when I found it," Lund said of his Holy Grail-like discovery. "The report says, the legislation 'contains complications where they don't exist ... divides the world into little pieces.... (Complicates by) incredible cross-references.' "
Lund said the executive director of the New Jersey Law Revision Commission at the time, John Connell, wrote the report which concluded it was legislation that needed clarification both by its intent and wording.
Lund hammered at the confusion written into this bill when he was the only person who spoke against the proposed legislation before the Assembly Housing and Local Government Committee last February 23. A room full of lobbyists didn't speak but registered by written statements their support.
"It's like the deck is stacked against you," Lund said. "The lobbyists are wise in the ways the system works. It's not easy to follow the complexities of the legislative process. The CAI, which represents condo owners throughout the state, has backed this legislation from the start. At a meeting in Leisure Village West in June, CAI leaders were shocked by members in opposition who can't fathom why there should be more government influence in their lives."
David Ramsey, the CAI lawyer, and Jack McGrath, CAI president, have lobbied long and hard to pass this legislation as something for disgruntled residents to use when there are disagreements the local association can't resolve.
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