OPEN LETTER TO THE MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE

An Opinion By Jan Bergemann
President, Cyber Citizens For Justice, Inc.

Published April 10, 2008

Dear Members of the House Select Committee,

Florida 's homeowners and condo owners can't thank you enough for all the extra hours you put in to listen to their stories about the problems they are facing in their associations. And it is very obvious from reading the condominium Bill H 995 filed by your Chairman Julio Robaina that you listened carefully. This bill surely will help Florida 's condo owners a lot! Great work! Thank you!

By establishing this Committee, House leadership indicated that they would be willing to listen to the homeowners as well. And dedicated homeowners traveled hundreds of miles, packed the meeting halls to tell their story, well documented in most cases, and waited hours on Saturdays to be heard.

But as soon as the legislative session began, all constituents' input was quickly forgotten by Speaker Marco Rubio's "leadership team." They decided to put lobbyist Peter Dunbar and his sidekick Travis Moore in charge of the HOA reforms. Don't ever forget: Pete Dunbar influenced most of the existing HOA statutes that cause all the problems the committee heard about.

It seems that House leaders just pulled the legs of the committee members, when they told them to come up with recommendations to improve the quality of life in homeowners' associations. They plainly ignored the excellent Final Committee Report: http://www.ccfj.net/HSCFINALREPORT.html, the many hours of work you put into it -- and the requests of their constituents! Latest after the hearings of the House Select Committee on Condominium and Homeowners' Association Governance everybody should know that there are huge problems in our homeowners' associations, but the Republican House leadership ignores again the wishes of their constituents! But -- what's new?

Actually, House leaders turned against the recommendations of the Select Committee when allowing Representative Andy Gardiner to file and push his House bill H 679, a bill that is about as pathetic as it comes. The proposed bill even takes away good provisions that were achieved in former years. Instead of reforms, homeowners see regression. Goes great together with our failing economy and the all-but-dead real estate market!

Just a few "highlights" of this pathetic bill:

Invites convicted felons to run for the board of homeowners' associations. Since the condo reform bill restricts ex-felons to serve on the board, they now have to move into HOAs.
Problems with record requests? What problems? Let the owners sue if they want to see the financial records! It's none of their business anyway! Transparency? What's that?
The bill rewrites election provisions, but instead of creating clarity it allows for more confusion. Mixing ballots, proxies and votes from the floor makes it a free-for-all -- invitation for sitting boards to do whatever they want. It's great to see that the bill still allows election arbitration conducted by the DBPR. But how should an arbitrator rule if nearly every election scam is allowed?
But the main focus of the bill is the fact that it wants to allow kangaroo courts again. Quote: "A fine of less than $1,000 shall not become a lien against a parcel." The attorneys are at it again, trying to revive the lien and foreclosure threat. They just add two "imagined" violations together and they are legally allowed to go back to their old game again -- blackmailing owners into paying for invented fines: If you don't pay the fine, we foreclose on your home!

The bill uses some pool provisions -- never heard an owner complaining about that -- and unenforceable disclosure provisions to cover up the real problems of the bill. The headline of the bill should read: Let's just make some more special interests happy!

Only a Mickey Mouse Representative can have the audacity to put his name next to a bill like that! But why should he care? Representative Gardiner never had a real competitor in his district and he gets a free pass for the Senate in November. No wonder Florida has so many problems and many of our citizens want to leave this state -- if they only would be able to sell their homes!

Not to forget lobbyist Peter Dunbar. Under the cover of trying to "protect the associations" he lobbies for the ATTORNEYS FULL EMPLOYMENT ACT AND GET RICH QUICK PLAN! To the detriment of the owners!

To make it short: We homeowners just can't afford any longer to let the service providers rip us off!

Some of the Republican "Legislative Leaders" (who "by chance" have lots of constituents living in associations) are up for re-election in very vulnerable districts. We will just target a few, which will make our efforts much more effective -- and possibly very successful! You have already seen the trend in the special elections since the last election!

If House Bill 679 passes in the House in the proposed version, legislators may have some fun for the next three weeks, but then we owners will have some fun at your campaign rallies for re-election -- all summer long. You have seen during the meetings of the House Select Committee that lots of owners are desperate and will do nearly everything to protect their homes and the welfare of their families that is being destroyed by the twisted laws governing our homeowners’ associations. This bill will make things even worse instead of creating necessary reforms!

And since desperate times call for desperate measures, we will work it this year the European way. In Europe you don't go to show support for candidates, you go to the rallies of the candidates you want defeated! I can assure you, we will have a field day -- and so will the media.

And then please ask Peter Dunbar and Travis Moore to get you the votes to get re-elected!

Andy Gardiner doesn't care: He is already elected by default!

Please consider that more than 70% of our members are registered Republicans who will have no quarrels to vote for any opposing candidate, no matter what party. That may show you that times are desperate!

You may chose to ignore these fair warnings, but we homeowners will no longer be willing to see our lives and retirement destroyed because you think big campaign coffers will fix the problems for you in November.

Don't bet on it!

DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES!