Why the size of the association was the wrong lever — and what the bill's own structure shows

Read the two statutes side by side and the existing law is already scaled: it keys the reporting standard to revenue, not to unit count. A fourteen-lot subdivision collecting $400 a year per lot has revenue of $5,600 and therefore already owes nothing more than a statement of cash receipts and disbursements — the cheapest tier, preparable by a volunteer treasurer with a spreadsheet. The audit tier does not begin until a million dollars for planned communities.

So the compliance burden SB 233 targeted was, for most small associations, already close to the floor. What the bill would have removed for those associations was not the audit — it was the obligation itself, along with the deadline and the delivery duty.

The drafting point worth noticing: subsection (1) went with it

This is the part worth reading closely, because the two statutes are not built the same way.

In KRS 381.794, subsection (1) is purely about record-keeping detail. But in KRS 381.9197, the condominium section, subsection (1) carries a second sentence that has nothing to do with financial reports:

“All financial and other records shall be made reasonably available for examination by any unit owner and his or her authorized agents.”

SB 233's new subsection (4) disapplied “subsections (1) to (3)” wholesale. On the face of the text, a condominium of fourteen or fewer units would have fallen outside that records-availability sentence too — not merely outside the financial-report tiers. Whether that was intended is not something the record answers: there is no committee substitute, no floor amendment, and no House hearing in which anyone was asked.

For planned communities the equivalent right lives in a separate section, KRS 381.795, which SB 233 did not amend. So the two halves of the bill, though worded identically, would not have had identical effects.

A Kentucky board's options now

• Assume no change. If your association deferred a compilation or a review in the expectation that SB 233 would pass, that expectation is gone. The 2026 deadlines ran on the existing statute.
• Check which statute you are under before you check the threshold. The deadline is 180 days for a planned community and 150 days for a condominium, and the revenue bands are different numbers. Using the condominium bands in a planned community, or the reverse, produces the wrong answer at every tier.
• Total annual revenue is not assessment income. The statutes say “total annual revenues,” which reaches transfer fees, fines actually collected, interest, clubhouse or amenity rentals, and laundry or vending income. An association sitting just under a threshold on assessments alone can cross it once the rest is counted.
• The delivery duty is separate from the preparation duty. Both statutes give the association 30 days after the board receives the report to make it available — electronically at no charge, or on paper for a reasonable fee, for planned communities. Preparing a report and leaving it in the manager's file does not discharge the section.
• You may always go higher. Both statutes expressly permit an association to elect a higher standard than its revenue band requires. Where a small association is heading into a large capital project, that election is available without any amendment to the governing documents.

Where the bill went after the House ignored it

SB 233 did not simply vanish. Its two subsections were folded into Senate Bill 9, the session's housing omnibus, when the House Local Government Committee reported that bill with a committee substitute on 1 April 2026 — with one change: the threshold moved from fourteen to fifteen lots and units.⁶

That vehicle failed too. SB 9's conference committee filed its report on 15 April 2026 with the box marked “Cannot agree,” and the session adjourned sine die the same day. So the exemption died twice in one session: once on the House Committee on Committees desk as a standalone bill, and once in conference as one section of a sixty-page omnibus.

Kentucky abolished bill pre-filing in 2022, so there is no 2027 bill request to inspect and no successor to track before January. As of 10 September 2026 the Legislative Research Commission had published no 2027 session records at all.

What the record does show is a measure that drew 34 Senate votes and no opposition, then failed twice on procedure rather than on the merits. This column does not forecast whether it returns — but boards that would benefit from it should watch the bill list when the 2027 session convenes, not the news.