H. 4006 would have made South Carolina HOA board meetings open to members. It never left Judiciary
H. 4006 would have made South Carolina HOA board meetings open to members. It never left Judiciary
2026-09-19 · South Carolina · Legislation · Did not pass
South Carolina has no open-meeting requirement for homeowners-association boards, and the bill that would have created one recorded a single line of history. H. 4006 was introduced on February 13, 2025 and referred to the House Committee on Judiciary the same day. Nothing followed.1
Four additions in one bill
Sponsored by Reps. Teeple, Crawford, Hartnett, Bustos, B. Newton, Landing, Pope and Guest, H. 4006 proposed three new sections and one amendment:
- Section 27-30-350 — board meetings open to members of record, with notice published in advance, minutes recorded, a member right to request notification and to record proceedings, and an express bar on using informal gatherings to circumvent the requirement.
- Section 27-30-360 — political signs protected from 90 days before an election through 10 days after, with the association retaining authority over size, placement and content standards.
- Section 27-30-370 — no fines for an expired tag on a parked vehicle, boat, trailer or recreational vehicle.
- Section 27-1-60 — amended to extend the flag-display right to the South Carolina state flag alongside the United States flag.
What the Act requires today
The Homeowners Association Act contains one notice provision and it is narrow. Section 27-30-140 requires 48 hours' advance notice to homeowners before a board acts to increase an annual budget, by posting in a common area, on an association website, by email, or through a method in the bylaws that ensures actual notice.
Two limits on that provision are easy to miss. It applies only to a budget increase, not to meetings generally. And subsection (2) states that it "do[es] not apply to a homeowners association that is incorporated under the South Carolina Nonprofit Corporation Act" — which is most of them.2
Where meeting rights actually come from
For an incorporated association, meeting and notice obligations come from the Nonprofit Corporation Act in Title 33, Chapter 31, and from the bylaws — not from the HOA Act. Those provisions govern member meetings, notice of them, quorum and voting. They do not require that board meetings be open to members, and neither does any South Carolina statute.
So the position H. 4006 would have changed is this one: whether a South Carolina board must let members attend, observe or record its meetings is answered by the association's own governing documents. Where the documents are silent, there is no statutory default supplying the right.
That gap is visible in the complaint data. In the Department of Consumer Affairs' 2026 report, the single most common change complainants wanted to see in governing documents was open meetings and notice, at 27.5%.3
The expired-tag provision, and why it was in the bill
Section 27-30-370 looks minor beside the rest, and it is a good illustration of how South Carolina fining works. An association's authority to fine comes from its recorded declaration; the Act does not grant it, cap it, or list what may be fined for. A covenant that prohibits inoperable or unregistered vehicles is enforced on its own terms.
The bill would have carved a single fact pattern out of that authority by statute. Nothing in current law does, so the scope of an association's fining power remains a question of what the recorded documents say and whether they were properly recorded.
Three bills, one section number
H. 4006's political-sign provision would have been Section 27-30-360. Two other bills of the same term proposed a political-sign section numbered 27-30-180: S. 366 and H. 5068. A third, S. 68, proposed a sign rule without that numbering. The protection windows differed — 90 days before to 10 days after in H. 4006, 30 days before to 5 days after in H. 5068 and S. 68 — and none was enacted.
South Carolina therefore still has no political-sign statute at all, and an association's sign restrictions are limited only by its own documents.
The flag provision
Section 27-1-60, enacted by 2002 Act No. 344, is the state's only covenant-override for displays, and it is narrower than it is usually described. It permits a homeowner or tenant, regardless of any covenant or association document, to display one portable, removable United States flag in a respectful manner.
One flag. The United States flag only. H. 4006 would have added the state flag; S. 366 would have gone further, permitting up to two flags and extending the right to the state flag, armed-services flags, the POW-MIA flag and a defined "first responder" flag. Both died, so the 2002 rule stands unamended.
What happens to the bill now
H. 4006 expired with the 126th General Assembly. Because South Carolina's two-year term does not carry bills forward, a 2027 version would be a new bill at first reading, with a new number.
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