BLOG

Right of Access to Personnel Evaluations, Background Screenings for Community Association Directors, Members

Roberto C. Blanch
September 2, 2014

Image

Our firm receives a great deal of questions about association matters from the readers of our blog and the listeners of our radio show on WIOD 610-AM every Sunday at noon. We try to provide specific responses to each and every inquiry that we receive. Recently, we received a question from a condominium association board member in Sarasota pertaining to a topic that we have not covered in quite some time and would like to revisit.

The reader explained that his association conducts an annual evaluation of the association’s property manager that includes an evaluation questionnaire. The evaluation meetings were conducted with the manager by each of the board members, and the evaluation questionnaire forms were collected by the manager who later delivered them to the board president. The reader asks if there are any Florida laws that govern the right of association board members to access these personnel evaluation forms as well as the results of the background screening that was used prior to the hiring of the property manager.

The laws related to community association official records and their accessibility to association members and directors specifically designate “personnel records” of the employees of associations as protected official records. The statutes for both condominiums and HOAs specifically stipulate that personnel records are not to be made accessible to unit owners. However, these and other types of protected official records must also be maintained by the association, and they must be made available to all board members. The members of the board of directors are fiduciaries of the association, and as such they are obligated to make important financial and administrative decisions for the association. In order to carry out their function in this role, they must have access to all of the protected official association records that are specifically barred from the unit owners who are not directors of the association. In addition, it should be noted that there may be other factors that must be considered with regard to the right of a director or association member to have access to such records. As such, we recommend that community association board members consult with legal counsel with inquiries they might have in connection with the specific circumstances of their community’s personnel records.

Our community association attorneys and I regularly consult and advise our clients on the proper procedures and best practices for maintaining the association’s official records and providing association members with access to such records in accordance with Florida law. We write about important legal and administrative issues for condominium associations and HOAs in this blog on a regular basis, and we encourage association director and members as well as property managers to submit their email address in the subscription box at the top right of the blog in order to automatically receive all of our future articles.