What the board owes, and the dates

The procedural obligations are precise and they are the ones an owner can actually enforce.

• The board adopts a proposed budget. That starts the clock.
• Within thirty days of adoption, it must provide a summary of the budget to all unit owners. Note the word: a summary, not the budget.
• It must set a ratification meeting not less than fourteen nor more than thirty days after the summary is mailed. Both ends of that window are mandatory.

A board that adopts a budget and simply sends out new assessment figures has not done what § 3.03(c) requires. A board that calls the ratification meeting for ten days after mailing, or for six weeks after, has not either.

The interest rate on arrears, while you are here

Section 34-36.1-3.15(b)(1) caps what the association can charge on late assessments: “Any past due common expense assessment or installment thereof bears interest at the rate established by the association not exceeding twenty-one percent (21%) per year.” The association sets the rate; twenty-one percent is the statutory ceiling, not the statutory rate.

And the provision nobody expects: the association can bill your tenant

Section 34-36.1-3.15(g)(1): “Whenever an assessment for common expenses has remained unpaid for a period of sixty (60) days, and the condominium unit is occupied by a tenant, the association may subject to the rights of a superior lienholder make demand upon the tenant for payment of the amount in arrears”, with payments credited against rent.

Sixty days of arrears and a Rhode Island association can go directly to a landlord-owner's tenant. For an investor-owner this is a more immediate consequence than the lien, because it arrives before any foreclosure machinery starts. Our Rhode Island collections and liens page covers what follows if the arrears continue.

Which buildings this applies to

Here is the catch that changes the answer for a large share of Rhode Island's condominium stock. Section 34-36.1-3.03 is not on the list in § 34-36.1-1.02(a)(2) of sections that reach condominiums created before July 1, 1982.

So a pre-1982 Rhode Island condominium has no statutory budget ratification vote at all. Whatever the bylaws provide is the whole of it. Owners in older buildings reading about the deemed-ratification rule are reading about a provision that does not govern them — which cuts both ways: no deemed ratification, but also no statutory right to a ratification meeting.

Post-1982 buildings get § 3.03(c) as written. Our Rhode Island budget approval page sets out how the two regimes differ.

How owners who actually want to change a budget do it

Not by voting it down. The rejection route requires a majority of every owner in the building and delivers last year's budget if it succeeds. The two mechanisms that do more are elsewhere.

The special meeting. Section 34-36.1-3.08(a) lets owners holding twenty percent of the votes, or any lower figure in the bylaws, force a special meeting, and the board “must” call it where the stated purpose includes rejecting the budget or removing a director. In Song v. Lemoine, decided May 19, 2025, the Rhode Island Supreme Court held that petitioning owners “were entitled to the meeting they sought” and that a board cannot test the merits of their agenda items first.

Removal. Section 34-36.1-3.03(g): “Notwithstanding any provision of the declaration or bylaws to the contrary, the unit owners, by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of all persons present and entitled to vote at any meeting…at which a quorum is present, may remove any member of the executive board with or without cause”, except declarant appointees. Note the base: two-thirds of those present, with a twenty-percent quorum. That is a far lower practical bar than a majority of all owners — the removal threshold is easier to clear than the budget-rejection threshold, which tells you where the leverage is.

One more asymmetry on the same board

Section 34-36.1-3.03(a) sets two different standards of care for the same body. Declarant appointees owe “the care required of fiduciaries of the unit owners”; owner-elected members owe only “ordinary and reasonable care”. A Rhode Island board in the transition period is operating under two duties simultaneously.

What to watch next

Rhode Island's 2026 session produced no amendment to any of these sections. The deed-restricted assessment bill H 7853 — which would have required a board proposing a fee increase above a stated threshold to simultaneously propose a substitute budget without discretionary spending, and required hardship payment plans — was held for further study on March 26, 2026 and died, as its predecessors did in 2024 and 2025. The sixteen-member condominium law commission reporting by December 31, 2027 was directed to consider whether low- and moderate-income units need specific treatment “in condominium fee and special assessment setting”, which is the same ground.