New Sacramento Laws Degrade Homeowner Constitutional Rights – Center for California Homeowner Association Law

Yes, you read it right.

AB1458/Ta voids the will of the homeowner electorate. How?

It lets HOA boards lower the required quorum for a valid election AFTER owners have voted. Furthermore, the quorum reduction is done without any meaningful notice to owners. HOA boards need only give “general notice” – not personal notice to each owner – of its intent to use a 20% quorum.

“General notice” can mean posting it on a bulletin board in a remote location on the HOA campus that nobody visits.

No, lowering the quorum doesn’t mean owners get a new ballot. No, owners don’t get to vote a second time. Instead, the Inspector of Elections (assuming there IS one) will count the ballots, then decide if s/he has valid ballots totaling 20% of the electorate and, if “yes,” then declare the election finished. The new law doesn’t even require that the original election results be reported. So, who’s to know whether lowering the quorum was needed or not…?

Yes, the Center for HOA Law (CCHAL) fought this legislation in committee hearings and in meetings with the author [Republican Assemblyman Tri Ta from Orange County] but could get no traction with his staff. Ironically his staff helped draft the original legislation governing HOA elections whose goal was to ensure “fairness and integrity in association elections.” AB1458 torpedoes that idea.

Corp Code 7515 requires that, in the absence of a quorum stated in a HOA’s governing documents, board directors are to be elected with a minimum 33% of owners casting ballots. AB1458 scraps this law.

The new law applies to the election of board directors and to RECALLS. So perhaps that’s the only good thing we can say about AB1458/Ta: that campaigns to recall directors may only require 20% of the owners to take action. Though how homeowners are to get ahold of election results isn’t clear.
Here’s the new law on quorum https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB1458

A second bill (AB648/Valencia) — now law – also injures the constitutional rights of owners to free speech, though on first reading you might not think so. Like AB1458/Ta the Valencia also affects HOA elections.

Keep in mind that fully 2/3 of California lacks reliable internet and cell phone service. This law lets all HOAs – anywhere in the state –hold meetings electronically WITHOUT having a physical location where at least one board director is present and where members can assemble.

A good idea?

Yes, and no.

Holding virtual meetings has been the law since 2011 (with the passage of a Senate Housing bill SB563) AS LONG AS there was a physical location for members to assemble. Virtual meetings – via Zoom, for example – became the norm for countless HOAs during the covid pandemic.

Yes, holding virtual meetings has the POTENTIAL to encourage member participation in board meetings – but does it? It certainly doesn’t if your HOA is in the mountains or in the desert or in an inner city area where there is little or unreliable service.

But the complaint that CCHAL gets most often is that virtual meetings are too often a way to SILENCE homeowners – not to encourage participation. Homeowners report being shut out from virtual meetings by the property manager or board directors, because they’ve been branded as “troublemakers” or “disrupters.” Or they get shut out in the middle of a sentence that is questioning a board decision, especially one about spending homeowner money.

AB648 DOES have one physical location requirement: that there be a location where the Inspector of Elections collects, opens, examines, and tabulates ballots and HOMEOWNERSMUST BE ADMITTED TO THIS LOCATION.

Unfortunately, the complaint getting filed with CCHAL is that, yes, there IS a physical location, but it is two counties away at the office of the Inspector and NOT a location in the HOA’s common area or that is otherwise easy to get to so that homeowners can exercise their rights under Civil Code 5120 to witness the opening and tabulation of ballots.

So what do these bills add up to?

The HOA industry claims in its marketing materials that

“HOAs are a form of local democracy with leaders elected by their neighbors” and
“HOAs cultivate a true sense of community and active homeowner involvement.”

These two industry bills – both sponsored by the Community Associations Institute (CAI) and aggressively marketed to Sacramento lawmakers last year – show the hypocrisy of those two claims. The HOA industry has little concern for homeowner rights, even constitutional ones.

The new legislative session has just begun in Sacramento — so work with CCHAL to protect homeowner rights!

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