>>Welcome back.
It continues to amaze me
that the Florida legislature failed to do anything
to prevent tragedies like the one we saw
in Surfside last year.
98 people died when the Champlain Towers collapsed,
and yet the Florida House
and the Florida Senate could not agree to needed reforms.
Last week, I spoke to state representative Danny Perez,
who was the House sponsor of the bill.
Today, I speak to the Senate sponsor, Jennifer Bradley,
from North Florida
about why they couldn't reach an agreement.
>>Surfside was just a horrific tragedy
that unfolded last summer.
And what you realized when we started going
through the causes, not only the structural causes
and need for inspection, but when you started looking deeper
at the real problems that were present in terms
of condo administration and association administration,
we really realized that our owners, our condo owners,
were really flying blind.
They didn't have the information that they needed.
They didn't have the budget tools that they needed.
So it really opened up a lot of our condo statute in terms
of really reforming it, updating it, making sure
that condos were in their best financial health,
and that our owners were able
to make really fully informed decisions.
That proved to be a tall task for 60 days, and ultimately,
regrettably, we did not get over the finish line.
>>So, there was common ground when it came to the need
for inspections to be done.
>>That's right, Jim, and so first of all,
there's no requirement statewide for inspections of any
of our condos, or high rise dense residential buildings.
There's a few counties in Florida down in South Florida,
Miami-Dade and Broward,
that countywide have set up their own,
and they call it a re-certification system
that send qualified individuals through the buildings
to check for structural integrity issues.
There was a lot of common ground on that portion of the bill
on what we called in the Senate, the milestone inspection,
and that was having people go through the building,
and make sure that it was a safe place.
So if you go to bed at night,
you had a safe place that you could wake up,
and it also provided that information, some transparency.
That information was given not only to the unit owners,
but it also went to our local building officials.
>>And that gets us into a conversation about reserve funds.
What we were finding after Surfside is
that some condominium associations were waiving the
collection of these reserve funds.
Were waiving some portion of reserve funds so
that when critical repairs needed to be done,
there was no money available to it.
Talk to me about the difference between the House bill,
which said that there could no longer be any waivers
of reserve funds, and what you were trying to do
in the Senate, where you were trying to allow
for some waiving, or the ability to waive reserve funds.
>>I think we learned during Surfside that it is much easier
and much cheaper to fix repairs before they get to the level
that we see in some of these older buildings.
And so once you have owners who are fully informed
that there are reserve studies done,
they know exactly how much needs to be reserved,
and now they are charged with reserving them.
And then you enter the area of whether you can waive them,
and that was a point of disagreement between the Senate
and the House.
The Senate did not provide any flexibility, fully fund,
out of the gate, no waiver.
The Senate really balanced, not balanced safety,
but we balanced the ability of some of these associations
to make some of those decisions by
and through informed membership.
You know, the current law now is
that you can have a majority of the quorum at a meeting,
can fully waive reserves, and that's just unacceptable.
That doesn't give our unit owners any ability
to know what's happening financially with their condo.
So, what the Senate bill did-
>>Give me, wait, let me just hold you there 'cause I think
that's a really important point,
and I don't want to,
when we start using terms like a majority of a quorum,
I just want to break it down.
'Cause I think you would use an example with me.
Let's talk about a hundred unit condominium building.
What would it take?
Are you saying that it would require 51 of the condo members
to the owners of those units to waive the reserve fund,
or is it even a lower number when you start talking
about majorities of quorum?
>>It's much lower.
Current law, say you have a hundred unit owners,
and the quorum is 25.
A majority of quorum would be 13 individuals.
I talked to a condo yesterday, they have 25 units.
A quorum is three, which is the board, which means
that two individuals could fully waive funding reserves
for the entire building.
>>And the rest
of the building wouldn't even know this was occurring
unless they attended the meetings?
>>Correct, correct, and that's unacceptable.
Both the House and the Senate recognized that that is no way
to have unit owners making decisions about their investments
and about their safety.
So, the Senate version took that limit
and we raised that threshold.
We didn't take away the ability to waive,
but we took that threshold up to 2/3,
and we said, look, if you have a meeting called
by the condo where the budget is being discussed,
and you have 66%, 2/3, agree that there needs
to either be a waiver,
and it doesn't necessarily mean a full waiver.
You would need this even just to do a partial waiver.
>>Let me ask you this.
When you say 2/3, are you talking about 2/3 of the quorum?
>>No, no.
>>Or, 2/3 of the entire building?
>>2/3 of all unit owners of the entire building.
So, both the Senate and the House bill raised
that threshold up considerably from current law.
The House said no waiver at all,
and the Senate said 66, 2/3, of the entire building.
So, there was a difference on whether
or not there should be any flexibility in the equation
for whether reserves are even partially waived.
>>But wait, let me make the argument
that I know the State Representative Danny Perez made,
there should be no waiving
of reserve funds because you shouldn't play games when
it comes to the safety of a building and the lives
of the people who live in it.
Even if 2/3 of the people in that building want to waive,
sometimes government has to intercede for the benefit
of the smaller group because lives may be at stake.
>>Yeah, and that's a great point.
In a perfect world, there would not be,
we would make sure that every condo was fully funded,
and every repair was done on track, but we are transitioning
from a system that is vastly different from that.
And if we are not careful
in giving our associations a little bit of flexibility,
what we are gonna find,
and what the stakeholders have
just expressed genuine concern is
that we will have our senior citizens,
those on fixed income, those on low income, that are unable.
Say, if they want to have the flexibility
to say you know what, we're not gonna reserve
for the parking lot, but we want to make sure we reserve
for the roof.
We allow a little bit of flexibility as we transition
from our old model to make sure
that there isn't just an undue burden, and we don't look up
in three years, and folks are being displaced.
They have massive special assessments.
It's a balance that has to be made.
Safety is non-negotiable.
But in terms of funding the reserves and making sure
that people are armed with the information,
they have the reserve studies,
they have the inspections.
It's a process that will be a lot more meaningful at 2/3
and certainly exist now.
>>Okay, so here's the question that I keep wanting
to get to then.
Why couldn't this get done?
I don't understand how between yourself, and Danny Perez,
and staffs on both sides, you couldn't come to an agreement
on something as important as something as tragic
as what we saw in Surfside.
Why couldn't this just get done?
>>Well, I am equally as disappointed.
I can tell you that in the last week of session,
we were negotiating continuously.
When it was clear that the reserves, the reserve study,
and that portion of reform with regard
to the financial health of our condos when it was clear
that a compromise was not gonna be had,
I took that portion off the bill.
I stripped that out of the bill, and sent back
to the House just the milestone inspection program just so
that we could immediately get started doing inspections
statewide in our condominiums.
And ultimately, that was not accepted by the House,
and I hope that we can come back next year,
and get that passed.
That was disappointing to not see that move this year.
>>All right.
You just said a moment ago that hopefully you can take this
up again next year.
My frustration, and I think frustration for a lot of people
in South Florida is why does this need to wait for a year?
Why couldn't there be ongoing negotiations between yourself,
Danny Perez, whoever the individuals are, to try to find now
that the session is off,
and the pressure of the session is off,
trying to find some common ground,
and then go to the governor and say, call a special session.
We've got an agreement.
We can get this done in a month from now,
six weeks from now, eight weeks from now.
Why do we have to wait an entire year?
>>We don't have to.
Session just ended last week,
and it would certainly be my desire
to continue those conversation, engage more stakeholders,
and find a compromise.
So we can do just that, and go to the governor,
and go to our presiding officer to the chambers,
and say, look, let's bring everybody back,
and let's get this
over the finish line because Florida deserves it,
and certainly Surfside deserves it.
>>We are going to stay on this issue
for quite some time I guarantee you that,
and we'll be right back.