Academy/Minutes & Official Records
Responding to records requests
What to do in the days after an owner asks for your board's records, and how to do it without missing a deadline.
When an owner sends a written request for association records, the response clock starts immediately and the deadline is fixed by your state's statute, commonly somewhere between five and thirty days depending on where you are and whether you're professionally managed. Screen for anything the statute lets you withhold, then respond before that deadline, not after.
The clock starts the moment the request arrives
A verbal request in the parking lot does not start anything. The clock begins when an owner puts the request in writing, and how long you then have to respond varies by state, so check your own statute. In California, records from the current fiscal year are due within 10 business days, and records from the two prior fiscal years within 30 calendar days. In Florida, the association has 10 business days to make records available. In Texas, the response window is also 10 business days, though the association can send written notice extending that by up to 15 more business days. In Virginia, the window depends on how the association is run: 5 business days if a common interest community manager handles requests, 10 business days if the board is self-managed. None of these statutes allow an association to simply wait and see. See Owner inspection rights for what triggers the request in the first place.
Not everything you hold has to go out the door
Not all documentation an association holds counts as a record subject to inspection. A board member's personal notes are different from the minutes themselves, though the line between the two is not always obvious. Once you have identified what actually is a record, a narrow set of categories can still be withheld or redacted (removed or blacked out before the record is produced), and which categories those are varies by state and by document type, so confirm against your own statute. California permits redacting bank account numbers, attorney-client material, and another member's collection or discipline history, and requires the association to state its legal basis in writing when it does. Florida excludes attorney-client communications, personnel and medical records, and most personal identifiers. Virginia excludes personnel and medical matters, pending litigation material, and executive session minutes. See Redacting records and Privileged documents for the categories in detail.
Screen it, then send it, on time
Before anything leaves the building, someone should check it for the material the statute lets you keep back: attorney-client communications, personnel files, another owner's payment history. In Florida, an appellate court found "no statutory flexibility" in the ten-business-day response deadline, and the law recognizes potential "criminal liability for a knowing, willful, and repeated failure to make records available." This is not a step to skip because the board is busy this month.
"legal counsel may need to be engaged to review specific requests and ensure that records which are not official records, such as attorney-client privileged information, private medical information, personnel records, etc., are not inadvertently produced"
Source: Best Practices for Community Associations in Records Requests, Adams and Reese LLP
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
A homeowner in a Texas HOA mails a certified letter requesting the board's meeting minutes. Three weeks pass with no response from the board. What has most likely happened?
An owner in a California association requests copies of board minutes that include a paragraph about another owner's overdue assessment payments. What should the board do before releasing the minutes?
A Florida board president tells the manager to hold off responding to a records request since the board is busy this month. What risk does that choice create?
Sources
- California Civil Code Section 5210, California Legislature
- Florida Statutes Section 720.303, Florida Legislature
- Texas Property Code Section 209.005, Texas Legislature
- Code of Virginia Section 55.1-1815, Virginia General Assembly
- Inspection and Copying of Association Records, Tinnelly Law Group
- Best Practices for Community Associations in Records Requests, Adams and Reese LLP
Minutes & Official Records
Not sure whether something in your files even counts as an inspectable record? Read Redacting records next.
Response deadlines, what counts as an inspectable record, and what may be redacted before release all vary by state and by your association's governing documents.