HOA governance with the new CA no-email law

My HOA is struggling, as I am sure many others are, with continuing good governance and at the same time be compliant with the new no-email rule in California. (Briefly the law is: a majority of the Board can not congregate to discuss HOA business without a formal meeting announcement. Email is now considered a form of congregation.) In the past many day-to-day decisions were discussed and solved with email. We understand this has to change. But how best to do this?

The new Board President came up with a plan. He created 5 committees (landscaping, roofs, etc.) each with one member. (In theory there could be more than one but it's hard enough to get even this many volunteers!) Each committee report to him on a continuing basis, and than reports to the rest of the Board and HOA members at the monthly HOA meeting.

This approach appears to be both in compliance with the letter of the law and contravenes the intent of the law.

It is in compliance because: the committees are mostly one Board member. When that Board member communicates with the President (as most do almost daily, and sometime even more frequently) there are two Board members discussing HOA business. The Board has 5 members, so 2 members discussing business in legal.

It contravenes the law because: There are now only two persons in the loop in deliberation of HOA issues. Only one Board member, the President, has knowledge of all the issues. Yes, there is a report out at monthly meetings, but these meetings are not long enough to present, absorb, think about, and discuss all the details. The other Board members are left with little choice but accept the reports and their recommendations. If they disagree with any recommendation they can of course vote against, but will probably not have the time to propose alternatives and compromises. Their negative vote is thus not constructive governance.

The California law, while intending to foster greater transparency in HOAs may have this unintended consequence. Compliance with the law may foster greater secrecy. Before there were at least five individuals in the loop, now only two.

What are your thoughts? Are other HOAs confronting this conflict? What options are there for brining back open communications among all the Board members? Once solution may be to post all communications on a Blog or Forum, open to all. Any other options?

I wish that you'd re-read your own post. You are keeping board members out of the loop with your new "process". You are attempting to cut out debate and input.

Two people should NOT be huddling together to come up with ONE solution to an issue, and then put that up for a vote.

The job of a committees is to come up with OPTIONS to an issue and give those recommendations to the board. At discussion time, the board should have input, get questions answered, and make recommendations.

I'd have so much more respect if there was more than one person on the "committee.' Where are the rest of your HOA members?

As both a Property Manager and Board member, I struggle with trying to understand the reasoning behind the new law. We all know that the same legislators that created these new bills don't follow the same procedure in how they conduct state business.

In our Association, as many that don't have their own clubhouse, it has become very difficult to reserve a facility at a moments notice to discuss Association business. Being a somewhat large HOA with 317 homes there are a number of issues that meeting face to face is necessary as unfortunately e-mail just doesn't cut it.

More than anything, I don't want to spend 2 1/2 hours at a Board meeting discussing one item. As an recent example, we have had a rash of mailbox break-ins. Someone has a USPS key to open all of our mailboxes. That key also opens our front gates. So we need to discuss new security measures which could take five hours of discussion. These discussions doesn't involve anything listed under the "approved" topics for executive session so open session it is. My suggestion would be for the five directors to meet as a group and develop a plan that then can be summarized to the homeowners in an open session.

But these are the same lawmakers that gave us a $40B deficit.

What size is your HOA, Ron? Do you have a property manager who could prepare board packets containing the business that the board needs to discuss at the monthly meetings, which directors could receive in advance of the meeting to prepare themselves? We directors get ours about a week before the meeting.

Meantime, I share Susan's concern and don't like the president being so central to and privy all recommendations

The new law does permit us to take action without a meeting online, but only in cases of emergency. It actually sounds like Richard's locks/gate keys issue would qualify. If bids are involved, Richard could, of course, have the board meet in executive session.

We did call a Special Meeting of the Board last week, gave the proper 4-day notice, and decided on a vinyl flooring choice for a common area. We normally would've waited till next month's meeting, but needed to order it right away as it was being discontinued. Previously, we would've taken action without a meeting, but it was no hardship meeting for 5 minutes.

Can you use a public forum/message board that everyone can see to discuss, then use a formal meeting to make a decision?

OOOOOPS..... typo in my reply. This is correct:

I can NOT ignore these arguments. I am searching for counter arguments or solutions, or better yet true and tested examples of HOAs committees reporting online.

The reason for the new California law is to prevent secret meetings. We've had a lot of those in my very small HOA (10 units).

If some people do not have Internet access, then you need to make Internet access available at certain times in a common area.

Committees should always have more than one person. Three is a good size and with 92 units, the goal should be maximum involvement.

Day-to-day operations and emergency operations should not be affected by this new law.

Emails should help facilitate a smooth regular (and public) meeting and this includes sharing information on upcoming business. The solving of problems via email votes is secretive, if only by accident.

I don't think the California law is to restrict communication at any level between board meetings. That's an overly conservative interpretation in my opinion, but that's very easy for me to say here on the East Coast, I'll admit.