The licensure bill came closer than anything else, once

A1947's predecessor, A2450, was the only community-association bill in the 221st Legislature to clear a committee on this subject. It was introduced January 9, 2024, reported out of Assembly Housing and referred to Assembly Appropriations on December 9, 2024, and died there when the session ended on January 13, 2026.

Appropriations is where a licensure scheme would naturally stall, because building one costs money: a licensing unit, an application process, an experiential review, an enforcement function. The bill is back at introduction with no fiscal note.

Why New Jersey is an outlier

Community association manager licensing exists in a number of states. New Jersey has none — no licence, no registration, no continuing education, no state entity that can bar a manager from practising.

That gap matters more here than it might elsewhere, because of what New Jersey managers are now being asked to do. The 2023 reserve statute obliges every planned-real-estate-development association to commission a study and adopt a 30-year funding plan. The 2025 amendment added an 85 percent option with a 20-point bold-font notice, an anticipated special-assessment disclosure and a resale disclosure to buyers.

Those are consequential compliance obligations, and for most associations the manager is the person who executes them. There is currently no minimum qualification for that role.

The training bill's removal power

Three hours is a modest requirement. The provision permitting the commissioner to remove a director who does not complete it is not.

New Jersey association directors are elected volunteers under PREDFDA. A state official removing one for a training lapse overrides that election on an administrative ground — and it is the second pending bill to propose a commissioner removal power, alongside A4212's removal for non-compliance with a cease-and-desist order.

There is also a supply problem hiding in it. Recruiting volunteers to serve on a New Jersey association board is already difficult, and it is getting harder as the reserve obligations and their liability implications become clearer. A 180-day training deadline enforced by removal adds a condition to a job nobody is queueing for.

The curriculum line worth noticing

"Maintaining reserve accounts" is in the statutory curriculum. That is a direct response to the reserve statute, and it identifies the training bills as part of the same legislative reaction as the eight bills attacking P.L.2023, c.214 — but pointed at competence rather than at loosening the requirement.

Status of all four

All four sit in the Assembly Housing Committee or Senate Community and Urban Affairs with a single line of history each. No committee statements, no reprints, no hearings, no votes.

A1946 is the reintroduction of A2449 from the 221st, whose chain runs back to A1698; A1947 is the reintroduction of A2450, whose chain runs back to A1699. Both ideas have now been filed in at least three consecutive sessions.