Jesse Scheckner
Senate President Kathleen Passidomo has heard the calls for a Special Session on condo safety and the arguments that urgent action is needed to curb the rising costs of complying with recent legislation to address the issue.
She thinks the matter should be taken up as lawmakers reconvene for the 2025 Legislative Session — no sooner.
“I am increasingly concerned by what I see as a growing narrative, ripe with misconceptions and inaccuracies, regarding the condo safety legislation passed in the years following the devastating collapse of the Champlain Towers in Surfside. Some have suggested a Special Session be called to address or alter existing safety and reserve funding requirements and other related issues,” she said in a memo to Senators.
“I do not agree, and … I have no intention at the present time of utilizing my authority as Senate President to convene a Special Session.”
In her Friday letter, Passidomo — who will return to Tallahassee later this year as a regular member of the Legislature’s upper chamber — said Florida’s new “Condo 3.0” law that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in June and two other bills passed in 2022 and 2023, SB 4-D and SB 154, marked major steps toward shoring up condo safety deficiencies.
It will take time for the changes the measure implemented and the new strictures it established to fully take hold, she said. She noted that the financial impact will be heavy on condo owners “living on fixed incomes” and families whose “budgets are already stretched thin by inflation.”
Republican Sen. Jeff Brandes said as much in a Florida Politics guest column this week, describing the situation now as condo associations being in a “precarious position” where they are “forced to comply with a law that may bankrupt them.”
Passidomo said the changes were long overdue.
“As a conservative who has practiced real estate law for more than 45 years, you will not find a bigger proponent of private property rights,” she said. “However, in this instance both government and the private sector have had to respond in order to ensure appropriate safety standards and a healthy market for Floridians who want to buy or sell a condominium.”
Lawmakers will no doubt tweak Florida’s condo laws further during the coming Session, Passidomo said, but the new law and measures passed in years prior have improved transparency, established strict reporting and inspection schedules, and created actionable routes to remove and prosecute malfeasant condo board members who evaded comeuppance for years due to now-overwritten rules that rendered state enforcement agencies toothless.
Florida law now provides, among other things, that:
— Condos and cooperative association buildings three or more stories high must have “milestone inspections” for structural integrity after standing for 25-30 years, depending on their proximity to the coastline, and every 10 years thereafter. Additional inspections are mandated if condo or co-op associations receive a written notice from a local enforcement agency or if there is evidence of “substantial structural deterioration.”
— Unit owners have the right to inspect and copy milestone inspection reports and all other related materials. Renters have the right to inspect them.
— Condo and co-op associations must complete a structural integrity reserve study to determine the funds necessary for future repairs and replacements of their property’s common elements based on visual inspections every 10 years for each building three or more stories high.
— Associations existing on or before July 1, 2022, that are controlled by non-developer unit owners must have a structural integrity reserve study completed by Dec. 31, 2024.
— It is a breach of a board member or officer’s fiduciary duty if an association fails to complete a structural integrity reserve study.
— Condo and co-op association board members are prohibited by Florida’s anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) from using association funds for defamatory actions.
Notably, the “Condo 3.0” measure (HB 1021) — sponsored by Fleming Island Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley and Miami Republican Rep. Vicki Lopez — deleted a line from Florida Statutes that previously hindered the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) from enforcing existing condo and condo association laws.
To pay for added DBPR operations and staff to enforce the law, the measure includes a $7.4 million earmark — $6.1 million in recurring funds, $1.3 million nonrecurring.
Read Passidomo’s memo below.
