Twenty-one days notice is the one CAI opposes
Twenty-one days notice is the one CAI opposes
2026-09-15 · Pennsylvania · Legislation · Pending — not yet law
What would happen. HB 1174 would lengthen the minimum notice a Pennsylvania association must give before its annual or regularly scheduled meeting, from ten days to 21. It is not law. It was referred to the House Housing and Community Development Committee on 9 April 2025 and has had no action since.1
The change
The bill amends 68 Pa.C.S. §§ 3308, 4308 and 5308 — the meeting provisions for condominiums, cooperatives and planned communities. With deleted current law in brackets:
"The bylaws must specify which of the association's officers, not less than [ten nor more than 60] 21 days in advance of any annual or regularly scheduled meeting, shall cause notice to be hand delivered or sent prepaid by United States mail…"2
Note that it removes the outer limit as well as raising the inner one. The current window is ten to 60 days; the bill replaces it with a floor of 21 and no stated ceiling.
What else is in the text
The bill reprints the open-meeting machinery introduced by Act 115 of 2022 — recorded meetings retained for six months, limits on executive session, and the open-board-meeting rule, including the anti-evasion provision that "The executive board may not use a work session or other informal gathering of the executive board to circumvent the open meeting requirements of this section."2
Reprinting is how Pennsylvania bills show amended sections, so most of that text is existing law rather than proposed change. The operative amendment is the notice period.
The sponsorship
Rep. Joe Webster is the prime sponsor and the co-sponsors cross party lines, including Republicans Staats, Gaydos and Rader. The co-sponsorship memo is titled "Improving HOA Transparency."
The industry position, and why it is notable
The Community Associations Institute's Keystone Chapter maintains a public tracker of Pennsylvania bills with its position on each. Across the 2025-2026 session it supports most association legislation — the solar bill with its amendments accepted, the clothesline bill, the data-transparency companions, the tax-equity bill, the EV charging bill — takes no position on some, and lists exactly one as opposed. That one is HB 1174.3
The industry's stated concerns go to the meeting provisions generally: limits on what an executive board may discuss in closed session, and the ability of any owner to record meetings.
A single OPPOSE on a tracker that otherwise runs to support and neutral is a useful signal. It marks the boundary of what the professional side of Pennsylvania's association sector regards as acceptable, and that boundary is drawn at board process rather than at owner rights generally.
The practical case for and against 21 days
For. Ten days is short for a meeting at which owners elect directors, approve a budget or vote on an amendment. An owner who receives notice by post on day eight has effectively no time to read materials, arrange a proxy, or decide to stand for the board. Communities with seasonal residents or a substantial rental population lose more people than that.
Against. Twenty-one days constrains a board's ability to convene, and with the 60-day ceiling removed the drafting creates a floor without a corresponding limit. There is also a cost: associations that post notice physically pay per mailing, and a longer lead time can mean materials — particularly financial statements — must be finalised earlier than the accounting cycle comfortably allows.
That last point is the substantive objection worth taking seriously, and the bill does not address it. A budget meeting notice that must go out 21 days ahead requires a budget that is settled 21 days ahead.
What Act 115 already provides, and boards under-use
The current framework is more flexible than most Pennsylvania boards realise, and the flexibility is recent. Act 115 of 2022 — which remains the most recent substantive amendment to Pennsylvania's association statutes, since Title 68 was not touched at all in the 2025-2026 session — introduced virtual and hybrid meetings, electronic notice, electronic and absentee voting, and an independent election reviewer required for communities of 500 or more dwellings with an opt-in for smaller ones.
Electronic notice is the relevant tool here. An association that has adopted it can give owners meaningfully more time at no additional cost, which is the benefit HB 1174 seeks without the rigidity it would impose. A board persuaded that ten days is too short does not need to wait for the legislature.
The independent reviewer is the other under-used provision, and it addresses the concern that actually generates disputes in Pennsylvania communities — not how much notice was given, but whether the count was honest.
The bill's relatives
HB 1174 is one of two transparency measures parked in committee. The other, SB 873, would add planned-community associations to the definition of "local agency" in the Right-to-Know Law, which would be a far larger change; it has sat in Senate State Government since June 2025.
The most comprehensive attempt died in the last session. HB 2149 would have amended seven sections of the planned-community chapter together — records, bylaws, meetings, quorums, voting and dispute resolution — and would have added an independent vote reviewer and a Bureau of Consumer Protection complaint route for bylaw, meeting, quorum and voting violations. It was reported out of its committee with a request to re-refer, sent to Housing and Community Development in April 2024, and died there.4
What to watch next
The session ends 30 November 2026 with no carryover. HB 1174 has been in committee for seventeen months without a hearing and dies then on current form.
The pattern across three sessions is worth stating plainly: Pennsylvania has repeatedly introduced association governance and transparency bills, from both parties, and has enacted none since Act 115 of 2022. Whatever boards are asked to do differently in the next two years will come from lenders, municipalities and federal agencies rather than from Harrisburg.
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