Who actually pays

This is the provision that makes the increase land differently in Nevada than the same increase would elsewhere. NRS 116.785(2) — unchanged by AB 396 — shifts liability where the respondent is a volunteer:

If the respondent is a member of an executive board or an officer of an association, and the Commission or hearing panel finds that the respondent did not knowingly and willfully violate the provision at issue: the association is liable for all fines and costs imposed against the respondent, and the respondent may not be held personally liable.

That is a genuine and sensible protection for volunteers, and Nevada is right to have it. But read it alongside a fivefold increase and the consequence is arithmetic: the higher fine is very often a charge against the association's operating budget, which is funded by the assessments of every owner in the community — including the owner who filed the complaint.

A $5,000-per-violation ceiling against a small association with a few dozen units is a meaningful assessment event. The volunteer who made the mistake is protected; the neighbours are not.

Where the increase sits in the enforcement scheme

The fine is one item on a list. On finding a violation, the Commission or a hearing panel may take “any or all” of the available actions — an order to cease and desist, an order to take affirmative action to correct the conditions resulting from the violation, the administrative fine, removal from office or position, and payment of costs. The fine is rarely the whole of an order and never the whole of the exposure, because the Division's costs and fees ride alongside it.

The Commission's published disciplinary orders show what the docket actually looks like. The overwhelming majority of respondents are associations themselves rather than community managers, and a recurring category is an executive board that has fallen below the required three members. Those are the cases the new ceiling will be applied to.

The collection problem behind it

A fine that is not collected is not a deterrent, and the Commission has been carrying this as a standing agenda item — discussion of the State Controller's Office debt-collection process for fines the Commission has issued. The same meeting materials show cases filed as long ago as 2015 and 2018 still returning for status checks in 2026.

That context matters to how the increase should be read. Nevada did not add enforcement capacity in 2025; it added a bigger number to an enforcement process whose speed and collection rate were already the subject of complaint.

What did not change, and why the contrast is worth noticing

NRS 116.31031 — the fine an association may impose on an owner — was not touched by the 2025 session. It still caps an ordinary violation at $100 per violation and $1,000 per hearing, and still lifts the cap entirely for violations posing an imminent threat to health, safety or welfare, using criteria the Commission has yet to put into force.

So the 2025 session's arithmetic on fines runs one way. The state's fine against an association went from $1,000 to $5,000 by statute, immediately. The association's fine against an owner is either $100 or unlimited, and which one it is has been left to a regulation the Commission adopted on September 9, 2026 and that has not been filed.

Practical notes for boards and managers

• Check your D&O policy's regulatory-proceedings coverage. The statute makes the association liable for fines against an unknowing board member; whether your policy responds to an administrative fine, and with what sublimit, is a policy question, not a statutory one.
• The “knowingly and willfully” finding is the whole of the protection. A board member who was warned and proceeded is outside subsection 2, and personally exposed at the new number.
• Fix the three-member problem if you have it. A board below the statutory minimum is one of the most common paths onto the Commission's docket, and it is entirely curable before anyone files anything.
• Count violations, not cases. A pattern of the same failure across multiple months or multiple owners is a pattern of violations, and the ceiling applies to each.