Where the change actually happened

The practical consequence is that a Maine board which monitors chapter 31 for its legal obligations has been watching the wrong document. The active surface is a set of freestanding statutes outside the Act:

• 33 M.R.S. § 576-A — EV charging, enacted by P.L. 2025, c. 280 (LD 1133), effective 1 January 2026, voiding declaration provisions that prohibit or unreasonably restrict a charger. It sits in Title 33, chapter 10 — the older Unit Ownership Act chapter — yet reaches any common interest community by cross-reference to Title 38, § 3002(3).
• 33 M.R.S. § 1451 — low-impact landscaping, created by P.L. 2023, c. 376 (LD 649).
• 33 M.R.S. § 1423 — the solar-device protection, with its 30 September 2009 cutoff.
• 33 M.R.S. § 1603-106(c) and § 576(10) — political-sign protection in an election window, added to both condominium statutes by P.L. 2015, c. 271 (LD 955), effective 15 October 2015.
• 10 M.R.S. § 9094-A — mobile home park purchase rights, strengthened by P.L. 2025, c. 394.
• 35-A M.R.S. § 3475 — plug-in solar, created by P.L. 2025, c. 644, with no association override at all.

Read together, these describe a legislature that legislates by exception. When Maine wants to reach community associations, it writes a new section somewhere else and attaches its own effective date. Chapter 31 is a 1981 statute built on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act, and it has been left that way.

Three asymmetries worth knowing

Maine has two condominium statutes. Chapter 31 governs condominiums created on or after 1 January 1983. The older Unit Ownership Act at Title 33, chapter 10 still governs pre-1983 condominiums, with § 1603-118 reaching back for post-1983 events. Which statute applies to you is a function of your recording date.

Planned communities have no statute at all. A Maine non-condominium homeowners association is governed by its recorded CC&Rs, the Maine Nonprofit Corporation Act at Title 13-B for corporate governance, and common law. The Condominium Act is condominium-only and should not be read across.

The new carve-outs do not respect that line. Section 576-A reaches “common interest communities” broadly, which means a Maine planned community with no statutory framework of any kind nonetheless has a statutory EV-charging obligation with a 60-day deemed-approval rule. That is the first time a Maine statute has imposed an operational deadline on a planned-community board.

What it means for how you brief a board

Two practical habits follow from a static Act.

First, a “no change to the Condominium Act” report is not a “no change” report. The compliance items that appeared in 2025 and 2026 — an EV-charger intake process with a hard clock, an insurance-certificate requirement, attorney-fee exposure — are all outside chapter 31.

Second, the gaps in the Act are gaps that the declaration has to fill. With no statutory records deadline, no reserve mandate and no inspection requirement, what your association must do is whatever its own documents say, plus whatever lenders require. On reserves, the lender layer is now the binding one: Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03 raises the minimum reserve allocation to 15 percent of annual budgeted assessment income for loan applications received on or after 4 January 2027. Maine law asks for nothing; the secondary mortgage market does.

What to watch next

One thing, and it is the only candidate for changing this picture wholesale. Resolve 2025, chapter 167 — LD 760, approved 16 April 2026 — created a 12-member commission to study whether Maine should codify or recodify its community-association law by adopting the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act. It reports by 1 December 2026, and the Housing and Economic Development Committee may submit resulting legislation to the 133rd Legislature in 2027.

Maine's condominium law descends from the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act, grouping it with Pennsylvania and Texas rather than with UCIOA states such as Connecticut and Vermont. Whether the commission recommends moving Maine across that line is not something this column will guess at.