New Jersey bill would cap board terms at two years and run elections independently
New Jersey bill would cap board terms at two years and run elections independently
2026-09-15 · New Jersey · Legislation · Pending — not yet law
The most detailed election-mechanics bill pending in New Jersey has now failed in at least three consecutive legislative sessions without a hearing.
A1138, introduced January 13, 2026 by Assemblyman Joe Danielsen and referred to the Assembly Housing Committee, would set standards for the election and recall of association officers and restrict certain expenditures.1
The mechanics
Elections at two-year intervals, run by an independent election committee composed of members who are neither sitting board members nor candidates. Board member terms capped at two years.
Board size capped at three members for communities with fewer than 11 homes; a default of five for all others unless the bylaws provide otherwise.
The coverage expansion
PREDFDA's election provisions would extend to associations with fewer than 50 units, which currently sit outside them. That is the structurally most significant provision in the bill and the one that gets the least attention.
The notice requirements
Two written notices. The first no later than 60 days before the election, carrying the rules, nominations and candidate applications. The second no more than 30 and no fewer than 14 days before, carrying the official candidate list, absentee ballots and proxy ballots.
Owners must be allowed to vote anonymously, and to cast ballots by mail, in person, or electronically.
Challenges
The election committee would get exclusive authority to investigate challenges, and must report substantiated vote-tampering or fraud to DCA's Division of Housing and Development — unless the committee itself is implicated.
The under-50-unit gap is the real subject
New Jersey's election rules for community associations came from the Radburn Act, P.L.2017, c.106, and its implementing regulations. Small associations are outside significant parts of that framework.
That exclusion is defensible in the abstract — a twelve-unit condominium running a formal nomination process with candidate applications and absentee ballots is administratively absurd. It is also where the worst governance outcomes in New Jersey happen, for exactly the reason it is exempt: no process, no scrutiny, no turnover.
A1138 resolves that by extending the rules and simultaneously scaling the board down to three for the smallest communities. Whether the notice machinery is workable at that scale is a fair question and one a committee would be well placed to answer, if a committee ever looked at it.
Term caps cut both ways
Two-year maximum terms, in a sector where recruiting anyone to serve is the binding constraint, is not obviously a reform.
New Jersey association boards are unpaid volunteers. The community with a treasurer who has served for fifteen years is sometimes a governance problem and is more often the only reason the books balance. A hard cap forces turnover in both cases.
Against that: entrenchment is real, and the self-perpetuating board that controls nominations, runs the count and investigates complaints about itself is the fact pattern the independent election committee provision is designed to break.
The expenditure restriction is undefined in the summary
The bill also requires member approval for certain expenditures. Which expenditures, and at what threshold, is the provision a board would most need to know, and it is not something the bill's synopsis resolves. Anyone advising on A1138 should read the operative section rather than the summary.
Three sessions, no hearing
A1138 is the reintroduction of A476 from the 221st Legislature, which died; that chain runs back to A5239. It has now been filed and left unheard in at least three consecutive two-year sessions.
There is no Senate companion, no committee statement, no reprint, no vote.
What exists in the meantime
The Radburn regulations at N.J.A.C. 5:26-8 — which the Appellate Division partly reversed in February 2024, which DCA readopted without change in March 2025, and which now run to March 2032 unamended. That is the election rulebook New Jersey associations actually operate under, and its printed text and its enforceable text are not the same document.
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