Conflicting Policies
At our most recent Board meeting, the Board voted to adopt amendments to the association recording policy. They updated a few sections to ensure members were not sharing meeting recordings amongst themselves 🙄, but also updated the time frame the association would keep the recordings on file. The policy states that if the Board records the meeting, then Members are not allowed to record it. The policy was amended to reduce the time the association retains the recording from 90 days to 30 days, and stipulated that Members should refer to the Record Retention and Member Request for Records Policy and Procedure that has never formally been adopted by the Board, for how to request the recording. The retention policy states unedited audio/videotapes of meetings will be kept permanently and are a disclosable record to Members.
Both the Record Retention Policy and the amendments to the Recording Policy were written and recommended by our association’s attorney. I questioned the 30-day recording retention amendment during the meeting and received the simple answer of “it was being done at the recommendation of general counsel.”
Evidently our Board members had not bothered to read it closely enough to identify this blatant conflict. The Recording policy has officially been adopted, and does reference the Retention policy, which has not been officially adopted.
What can I as a homeowner do now?
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Amy,
Let me just say this I personally drafted the legislation that allowed members to record board meetings. Once you record a board meeting that recording is yours to do whatever you want with. You can share it with any other member of the association who was at the meeting and the association has absolutely no authority to limit you from doing that. You cannot share it with anyone outside the community unless you are using it as evidence in a hearing or court. The law specifically protects that option. The association has the authority to prevent anyone from recording only if they record that meeting themselves and then provide it to any member upon request at any time. The association board has absolutely no authority to delete that recording at any time as that recording become a record of the meeting and must be retained as long as the minutes for that meeting are retained. Which is forever. If you recorded the meeting yourself the association has no authority to ask you to delete that recording after 30, 90 day or whatever so they cannot also do the same. If anyone ask for the recording of that meeting one year, two years or whenever after the meeting the association is required by law to provide that member the unedited copy of that recording.
The association attorneys will say and do anything that the board pays them to say or do. and does not mean that is ever right. Remember if the association attorney gives the board bad advice they are protected under client/attorney privilege and if the association violates the law because of that advice the association can be taken to court but not the attorney and when the association is taken to court the attorney makes more money right or wrong, win or lose. Why do you think there are so many blatant violations of the law in these communities, because they can and if you try and enforce the law the attorneys make more money.
Creating a policy does nothing. As soon as the association refuses to provide a copy of a recording after they deleted it according with their policy, they are violating the law and can be held accountable to that either in court or thru a petition to ADRE. If I were you, I’d wait until the policy takes place and request a copy of a board meeting after they deleted it and if they refuse to provide you that copy then file a petition to ADRE on their violation of the open meeting law.
Dennis