What does censure achieve?

Hello All,

Just interested in knowing what a censured director can and cannot do, after being censured?

Thanks,

Robert.

Robert, As you probably know directors can only be recalled ("fired") by the HOA membership. I haven't looked at the materials in quite a while, but a couple of things a board can do is to form an Executive Committee of the board for Executive Session business and exclude that person from voting/attending. This might be a good step to take if the director has violated confidentiality. If s/he is an officer, the board can vote her/him out of office.

Look at davis-sterling.com, "censure" on their Menu, for more. Also see Robert's Rules--perhaps someone else can give the actual citations. I believe that the censure can be noted at an open or regular meeting of the board, but can't quite remember.

Out of curiosity, what did this person do to warrant censure by the board?

About the only thing a "censure" does is make a paper trail to be used for any possible future discipline hearing.

The censure should be placed in the file and then life goes on . . .

If the party commits another such violation, then there is a record of a previous censure. Removing him/her from office becomes that much easier.

In effect, it's an official "warning."

Please note that Susan wrote that the board can remove the offender from "office" via a majority vote. In CA, tho', the board cannot remove the offender as a director.

Directing expletives at board colleagues might suggest a personality and lack of professionalism that's not suitable for board service especially if the remarks were made during an open meeting.

But having the "censure" on record for the meeting at which the censure occurred is, as Susan points out, very important.

Our board had a similar situation during which a director used expletives against an owner who had been called to hearing in Executive Session. At the next executive session, we instructed the director to avoid such language in the future; the director agreed to "try"; both the instruction and agreement were recorded in the minutes, and there's been no further incidents in about nine months.