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

Published September 12, 2024

This year the Florida Legislature finally added mandatory education to FS 718.112 (Condo Act) and to FS 720.3033 (HOA Act). Eric Glazer and CCFJ have been pushing this for many years!

The idea: Board members, who are actually in charge of the financial welfare of all the community members, should finally really learn the laws and rules governing the community association.

With the new wording in the statutes the legislators intended to remove the former requirements contained in the statutes that allowed board members to just sign an affidavit saying "I know it all!"

Well, many of them didn't -- as it was obvious by the many problems board members created by either not knowing the rules and statutes or just ignoring them.

Well, I'm now the proud owner of two Board Member Certificates -- valid for Condo and HOA -- courtesy of the Division of Condominiums, Timeshares & Mobile Homes.

I signed up for their on-line seminar, signed on at the time I was told and signed off after 4 hour of Internet "education?".

After the experience of attending their on-line seminar I have to give the folks at the Division an A for trying to educate board members, but an F for failing to do so.

Let me explain why I came to this conclusion: During the 4 hours of Internet education I most often barely listened to the presentation. I actually went into the pool, did my daily gym in the pool, I made and ate lunch and wrote my Weekly News on Constant Contact while my laptop was running in my office. Once in a while I actually looked on the screen of my laptop. I even made some telephone calls having to silence my laptop.

During the 4 hours of education I saw sometimes questions popping up -- questions I was supposed to answer. On one occasion I didn't answer at all, twice I answered totally incorrect -- on purpose. Guess what? It didn't matter!

I GOT THE BOARD MEMBER CERTIFICATES!

We have said it all along: Zoom and Internet seminars are about as useless as the form you needed to sign before the new laws were enacted! There is no way for anybody to control if the person who signed up is actually listening.

Is that what the Florida legislators had in mind when they enacted the new community association laws containing mandatory education for board members?

I honestly don't think so!

LEGISLATIVE SESSION