H 73 -- THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL |
By Jan Bergemann Published March 16, 2013
It seems like Representative George Moraitis loves to file tricky bills and then add even more nonsense during committee stops. His tactic: File a halfway reasonable bill, get it through the committee hearings and then add the bombshell at the last committee stop or even on the House floor, giving opponents no chance to object. Legislation by ambush! Typical Moraitis!
Last year it was House Bill 319, a bill that would have created even more misery in Florida's community associations. The still paying owners living in community associations already suffer enough by having to pay the bills for their deadbeat neighbors and the mortgage lenders, whose lending policies caused the real estate mess in the first place.
This bill died on the last day of the 2012 legislative session in the Senate, thanks to a concentrated effort by many grass roots organizations. Obviously Moraitis learned from this concentrated effort to kill his bill and is adding the real bad part of the bill only on the floor
But despite the fact that most of his constituents are members of community associations, Representative George Moraitis is again this year doing the bidding of banks and mortgage lenders, to the detriment of his constituents. The voters in District 91 are mostly condo owners. But Moraitis is rather representing the interests of the clients of his law firm than the constituents in his district. What I don't understand is the fact that these voters are voting for a legislators who is clearly working against his constituents. Are these voters looking for more financial punishment?
But Moraitis' bill contains a lot of provisions that are really bad for owners and especially homeowners' associations. Moraitis is again trying to destroy some of the improvements to association law enacted by Governor Jeb Bush's HOA TASK FORCE bill. On first view the problematic changes are not obvious, the devil is in the detail. But that is exactly what attorney Moraitis had in mind when he wrote his bills. He just hopes that most of his constituents don't understand the "traps" he is building into the wording of his bills and he can hoodwink his constituents to vote for him for another term next year! These are the provisions that are still in version HB73 C2 and need to be removed:
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