INFORMATION REQUESTS
QUESTION: An owner wants to review minutes of board meetings and association financial records covering the past five years. This owner is a notorious troublemaker, who complains constantly about the board and regularly threatens to sue us. Do we have to provide information that we know he will use as ammunition for future attacks?
ANSWER: Although not the answer most Associations want to hear - yes.
Condominium owners have a right to know how their community is being governed and the condominium statutes in most states require boards to make relevant information available to them. The Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine condominium statutes specify the records owners are allowed to see, including, among others:
Records of receipts and expenditures affecting the operation and administration of the association and other appropriate financial records;
Minutes of board meetings and unit owners plus records of all actions taken by the board or by committees acting on the board’s behalf;
Copies of original condominium documents and bylaws;
Financial statements and tax returns;
Most recent annual report;
Copies of current contracts;
That list includes virtually all important association records. But there is some information that is off-limits to owners – a much shorter list that includes:
Documents covered by attorney-client privilege – for example, communications about pending litigation.
Information about contracts currently under negotiation (although signed contracts should be available to owners who want to review them).
Communications that might violate individual privacy rights. This would include records dealing with personnel, salary, medical records and disciplinary actions involving association employees. It would also include records related to individual owners or individual units – their payment history, fines and delinquencies, for example. Personal medical information that owners often include in their requests for Fair Housing accommodations and modifications would also be on the “do-not-disclose” list.
The bottom line:
Unless your owner is demanding confidential information you cannot disclose, the board generally should approve the request, even if you suspect that the owner is going to use the information against the association.
It can be tempting to try and head off such use but it is usually better to counter the “mis-information campaign” with direct communications from the board in order to set the record straight.
State laws also typically require boards to be both reasonable and reasonably cooperative in responding to owners’ information requests. The Massachusetts condominium law specifies that the records must be available for “reasonable inspection” by owners during normal business hours or “at such other times” on which the owner, the manager and/or the board might agree. The statute doesn’t require you to organize the records to facilitate the owner’s review, nor does it require you to copy them, but if you are requested to do so, you can bill the owner for the reasonable copying costs. That is the only fee you can impose for complying with owners’ information requests. You can’t charge a fee for granting access to records they are entitled to see.
Although the laws for some states don’t specify a time within which boards must respond to information requests, but even in the absence of that requirement, your response time should be “reasonable” based on the time and effort required to compile the records. Lengthy delays will likely be viewed by a court as intentional ‘foot-dragging,” designed to impede access to the information.
Transparency and cooperation are definitely the best practices when dealing with information requests.
The more difficult you make it for owners to obtain the information they seek, the more likely they (and other owners) are to suspect the board has something to hide. The converse is also true: The more easily owners can obtain the information, the less likely they are to demand it ꟷ and the less time boards and managers will have to spend responding to information requests.
If you have any questions concerning information request, please contact Janet Aronson directly or reach the MEEB attorneys at law@meeb.com.