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Member HOA The Ranch at Prescott

Does the information the HOA and the management company must provide on request include emails and telephone numbers they have on file even if such information is not accessible via other public records?

1 Response

  1. Dennis Legere

    Joe;

    Good question. The association must provide access to any association record that is not confidential as defined in the 4 open meeting exceptions. The fifth open meeting exception is an exception only if the individual homeowner choses to make it so. There is no requirement for associations to reveal homeowners e-mail addresses or phone numbers, and most associations treat that as confidential information. Which in my mind is appropriate unless the individual homeowners have elected to make their information public.

    I believe that your question may also included the issue of the association board needing to disclose any e-mails between board members or individual homeowners. Most HOA attorneys will advise their clients that if they simply chose to not make board correspondence a record then they can avoid the record request for these correspondence based solely on the claim that they are not records. This is absolute crap. If the board conducts any correspondence involving community business it is subject to the open meeting laws and a discoverable record of the association. These records are routinely subpoenaed in any case involving the courts and are treated by the courts as community records. The open meeting laws clearly define a meeting as any assembly of a quorum of the board, where community business is proposed, discussed, deliberated or acted upon either in person or by technological means. E-mails are technological means as are conference calls. Any such meeting I’m not providing legal advise here simply stating the clear and precise definition of a meeting and the direct position of the Arizona Attorney General from a 1997 and 2005 published opinion. This is why most HOA attorneys will also advise their board to use a community email account rather than their personal e-mail account because they know that if the board uses their personal e-mail account for community the entire account information is discoverable by the court and the parties involved including any personal e-mails totally unrelated to community business. This is another case where HOA attorneys talk out of both sides of their mouth, telling board that they don’t have to provide e-mails to homeowners request for records all the time knowing that they will have to disclose that information to any court at any time.

    Dennis

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