What it would replace

Nothing, which is the point. New Jersey currently has no regulator of association governance in any meaningful sense, and the Department says so itself.

In its own homeowner information packet DCA states that it does not act on complaints of board misconduct "such as acting irresponsibly or contrary to the bylaws"; that there is "no standard this agency enforces" as to the content of minutes; that it has "no authority to mandate" annual audits; and that fraud allegations go to the county prosecutor because "This agency has no jurisdiction over such matters."

On reserves the Department is equally explicit: it "does not oversee owner-controlled associations relative to the association board's compliance" and has "no statutory jurisdiction over the business judgment decisions of association boards."

Owners with a complaint are directed to civil litigation. A4212 is a proposal to give them somewhere else to go.

The removal power is the contested provision

Every other power in the bill has an analogue in ordinary administrative practice. Removing an elected volunteer director does not.

New Jersey association boards are elected by the membership under PREDFDA and the Radburn rules. A commissioner's power to remove a director — even one who has disobeyed a cease-and-desist order, even after notice and hearing — overrides that election. Whether that is a necessary backstop or an unacceptable intrusion into community self-governance is the argument the bill would generate, and it has not been had, because the bill has never been heard.

It is worth noting that a second pending bill, S4157, would give the commissioner a similar removal power on entirely different grounds — failure to complete a three-hour training course within 180 days.

The 100-unit threshold cuts the wrong way for the people most affected

Large associations have professional management, retained counsel and the resources to run a defensible process. Small ones — the twenty-unit condominium where the same three owners have been the board since 2009, where minutes are informal and the treasurer is also the vendor — are where governance failures are most common and least remediable.

A4212 would reach the first group and not the second. No committee statement explains the threshold.

The history

A4212 is the reintroduction of A3467, which died with the 221st Legislature; that chain runs back to A4377. There is no Senate companion in the 222nd, and no committee statement, reprint, hearing or vote.

Read alongside the rest of the board — a task force bill, a manager-licensure bill, a board-training bill, a minutes-penalty bill, a conflicts-of-interest bill — it is the most complete answer New Jersey legislators have offered to the association-governance problem. It is also, on eight months of evidence, going nowhere.