Make sure your voice is heard at the State Capitol. Tell Governor Newsom to VETO SB 323.

In 2018, we fought hard to win the Governor’s veto on a bill that would have threatened homeowners’ privacy and would have made other fundamental changes to the way associations conduct their elections. On February 15, Sen. Wieckowski (D – Fremont) re-introduced the bill vetoed by Governor Brown. A one size fits all approach to governance simply does not work in California. As Governor Brown said, “If changes to an election process are needed, they should be resolved by the members of that specific community.”

There are over 50,000 associations in California and those elections happen on a regular basis. They are fair. They are transparent. The current election process is one of the most comprehensive and complex in the nation. It’s in the Davis-Sterling Act, as well as the corporations code because the public, not-for-profit corporations are governed by both sections of the code.

SB 323 has the following effects:

• It would require associations to allow any convicted felon to serve on its Board. It also limits the right of an association’s membership to set qualifications for candidates in other ways. It would prevent non-owners from running for the Board, and would allow associations to disqualify candidates only if they have been owners for less than one year, if a joint owner was on the Board or a candidate, or if they were delinquent in assessments and if other conditions were met.
• It prohibits associations from ever suspending an owner’s right to vote.
• It requires associations to post the requirements for running for the Board at least 30 days before the nomination deadline; and to post the list of candidates, deadline for returning ballots, time and place of the annual meeting, all 30 days before ballots were mailed.
• It allows owners to review the signatures of all other owners on the outside mailing envelopes, and to copy voter lists, including parcel numbers. As a condition of casting a ballot, homeowners must give up their right to keep their signatures private.