The records list, which is the practical heart of it

Rhode Island's records section is two sentences long. Section 34-36.1-3.18 requires the association to keep financial records detailed enough to comply with the resale certificate section, and provides that “[a]ll financial and other records shall be made reasonably available for examination within thirty (30) days of a request by any unit owner and his or her authorized agent.”

That is the whole of it. There is no list of records that must be kept, no list of exempt or confidential categories, no copying charge or cost-recovery provision, no express right to copies as opposed to examination, and no penalty. Our Rhode Island records inspection page covers the consequences of that drafting.

S 2899 Substitute A would have supplied the list:

“Records requested pursuant to this section shall include minutes, insurance policies, bank statements, signed contracts, reserve and condition studies, results of any financial review or audit, and paid vendor invoices.”

Seven categories, each of which is a fight somewhere in Rhode Island right now. Bank statements and paid vendor invoices in particular are the two an association is most likely to refuse and least able to point to a statutory exemption for.

A financial review, every five years, over twenty units

A new § 34-36.1-3.22 would have required it:

“Every condominium association organized under this chapter that governs more than twenty (20) units shall be subject to the financial review requirements set forth in this section.” Each such association would “obtain an independent financial review of the association's books, records, and accounts at least once every five (5) fiscal years”, conducted by a Rhode Island-licensed certified public accountant independent of the association, its managing agent and its officers and employees.

The review would go to the board on completion and be made available to owners on request subject to reasonable copying costs; the cost would be a common expense. And if the review turned something up, the board would have to escalate: “In the event the financial review report identifies any inconsistencies, the executive board shall proceed to a full audit.”

Rhode Island currently requires nothing of this kind. The word “audit” appears nowhere in the Condominium Act, and no state agency has jurisdiction to examine an association's books.

The ombudsman that was promised and never drafted

This is a documentary oddity and it needs stating precisely rather than dramatically.

The Legislative Council's own EXPLANATION page, printed at the back of both S 2899 as introduced and H 7854, reads: the act “would amend various sections of the condominium law to enhance transparency and establish a condominium ombudsman.”

But the operative text of neither bill creates one. Read end to end, each contains amendments to §§ 34-36.1-3.08 and 3.18 and a new financial-review section, and nothing else. There is no office, no appointing authority, no duties and no funding. The word appears in the explanation and nowhere in the bill.

Public testimony repeated the claim. A support letter filed with the Senate committee described the bill as creating “a neutral mediator or ombudsman to help unit owners and association boards resolve disputes without the immediate need for costly litigation”. And by the time the Senate voted, the Substitute A explanation had dropped the reference, describing the act as enhancing transparency and requiring board meetings to be open.

This column cannot explain the mismatch and found no drafting record that would. It is an unexplained discrepancy between an official explanation and an official text — not evidence that an ombudsman provision was stripped out, and not evidence that one was ever drafted. No 2026 Rhode Island bill created a condominium or homeowners association ombudsman in its operative text.

One smaller artifact in the same bills, since we are here: the amended section heading in the introduced versions reads “Meetings and notice, open guidance, minutes, executive session”. Substitute A corrects it to “open meetings”.

What a Rhode Island board can adopt voluntarily

All of it. None of these provisions requires a statute to work.

Open your board meetings by resolution, with the bill's three exceptions. The carve-outs are well drawn and a board that adopts them has a defensible policy rather than an ad hoc practice.

Publish the seven-category records list as your own policy. An association that says in advance what it will produce spends far less time arguing about what “all financial and other records” means.

Commission a five-yearly review if you are over twenty units. A CPA review is cheaper than an audit and it is the control that most reliably catches the problem nobody is looking for. Rhode Island imposes no audit duty on anyone, including a manager holding association funds.

And remember what you already owe. Thirty days, on request, to any unit owner or their authorised agent — and § 34-36.1-3.18 reaches condominiums created before July 1, 1982, unlike most of the Act's governance provisions.

What to watch next

Reintroduction in the January 2027 session, and the commission. The sixteen-member condominium law commission reporting by December 31, 2027 was directed to identify constraints that impede transparency in condominium governance and to examine conflict-resolution practices — which is where an ombudsman proposal would properly originate, with a drafted section attached to it.