Connecticut bill capping gifts to condo board members died without a committee vote
Connecticut bill capping gifts to condo board members died without a committee vote
2026-09-09 · Connecticut · Legislation · Did not pass
A Connecticut bill aimed at gifts to condominium board members and at vendor involvement in association elections died in the Judiciary Committee in the 2026 session. House Bill 5433 was referred on February 27, 2026, heard on March 16, and never voted on.1
It is the only Connecticut bill in either of the last two sessions to have addressed association election conduct directly.
What it proposed
The official title was “An Act Concerning Limitations on the Provision of Gifts to the Executive Board Members of the Association of a Common Interest Community.” Its statement of purpose was a single sentence:
“To promote integrity in the conducting of elections held by the association of a common interest community.”1
According to the Community Associations Institute's Connecticut chapter, the bill would have barred executive board members and board candidates from accepting gifts valued at more than $50 from unit owners or vendors, with limited exceptions, and barred managing agents, association management service providers and contracting service providers from campaigning for board candidates.2
The dollar threshold comes from the chapter's own account of the bill rather than from a legislative document. Because HB 5433 never received a file number, no Office of Legislative Research analysis or fiscal note was ever prepared, and the bill text itself is the only authority for its details.
How it died
Its complete history runs to two entries: referred to the Joint Committee on Judiciary on February 27, 2026, and a public hearing noticed on March 12 for March 16. Nothing follows. The committee's reporting deadline passed later that month and the bill lapsed, formally dying at adjournment on May 6, 2026.1
The opposition, and what it conceded
CAI's Connecticut Legislative Action Committee opposed the bill, describing it in its own publication as “overly broad, unnecessary, and likely to create more issues than it resolves,” and arguing the restrictions “do not account for the practical realities of community association operations.” Its illustrative examples were holiday cards, baked goods and modest gift baskets.2
Its substantive point was that “[e]xisting safeguards under CIOA and corporate governance standards already offer robust protections against undue influence.”2
That claim is worth examining rather than accepting or dismissing, because it describes what Connecticut associations are actually left with.
What Connecticut law does and does not say about this
CIOA imposes fiduciary duties on executive board members and contains conflict-of-interest machinery for contracts in which a director has an interest. Connecticut also credentials community association managers through the Department of Consumer Protection, and Public Act 25-111 tightened that regime in 2025 — narrowing which occupational licensees are exempt from registering and requiring a manager contracting with an association to disclose whether the manager has an interest in an entity soliciting business from the association.
What Connecticut law does not contain is any gift threshold for board members, or any restriction on a managing agent or a vendor campaigning for a candidate in an association election. Those were the two gaps HB 5433 addressed, and they remain open.
The regulatory backstop is thinner than it looks. The Department of Consumer Protection credentials managers but, in its own words, does not credential boards, and its Real Estate Unit does not hold hearings on condominium complaints. A unit owner who believes an election was influenced by vendor money has no agency to complain to.3
The pattern across the session
Of five common-interest-community bills live in the 2026 short session, one became law. Two — this one and the budget-approval bill, HB 5437 — died in the Judiciary Committee on identical timetables, referred in late February or early March, heard together on March 16, never voted on.
Both were raised committee bills, both were opposed by the same organisation, and neither produced a recorded vote that would show where individual legislators stood. That is a feature of dying in committee rather than on the floor: there is no roll call to point to.
What to watch next
The 2027 session convenes in January and is a long session, which restores individual legislators' ability to file bills in their own names. No legislator has announced an intention to bring this subject back, and it would be wrong to assume it returns.
If it does, the likely shape has already been signalled by the opposition: a narrower threshold with express carve-outs for social courtesies, and separate treatment of the vendor-campaigning question, which drew less argument than the gift cap and is arguably the more consequential half.
Related Connecticut HOA Topics
- HB 5433 (2026) bill status, official title, statement of purpose and complete history, Connecticut General Assembly ↩
- Legislative Update, Common Interest, Vol. XXI Issue 2 (April 2026), CAI Connecticut chapter ↩
- Condominiums, Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection — the agency's statement of what it does and does not regulate ↩
- Public Act No. 25-111 — the 2025 community association manager amendments ↩
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