In January 01, 2013, the new Colorado “Records Retention and Disclosure” law came into effect. This required all common interest communities to revise their Responsible Governance Policy on inspection and copying of association records by owners to include provisions of the new law. Remember, current law also requires your association, within 90 days after the end of its fiscal year, to disclose and make available the date its fiscal year commences, a list of current assessments, its current year budget, prior year-end financial statements, its most recent audit or review (if any), declarations pages of its current insurance policies, all its governing documents including responsible governance policies, and all prior year meeting minutes.
This January 2013 law specifies the records an association must maintain as “the sole records of the association for the purposes of document retention and production to owners.” The law also details which records may be withheld from production to owners, and which records must be withheld from such disclosure. This latter records wihholding includes personal identification and account information of members, such as telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, except for members of the executive board, which further means that you cannot publish them in a directory, or owner contact list, even for distribution only to the association members.
Does this Responsible Governance Policy exist within your community association? Have you revised it per House Bill 12-1237? Now, we have to revise it again! The prohibition on disclosing individual member e-mail addresses and telephone numbers has been considered an oversight which was most recently addressed by the state legislature with the signing of House Bill 14-1125, which at this point takes effect 06 August 2014. This new law now permits disclosure, to other members or residents, of individual member and/or resident e-mail addresses and phone numbers provided prior written consent to such has been obtained from that member or resident.
Original posting: May 01, 2014