What Vermont law says today

27A V.S.A. § 3-108 already permits remote participation; it does not require it. The section provides for meetings held by telephonic, video or other conferencing process on stated conditions, which leaves the choice with the association.

What § 3-108 does require is worth setting against the bill, because the access an owner already has is more substantial than most Vermont owners use:

• Special meetings on demand. Owners holding at least 20 percent of the votes — or a lower percentage if the bylaws say so — may call a special meeting. If the association does not give notice of the meeting within 30 days, “the requesting members may directly notify all the unit owners.”
• Open board meetings. “Meetings shall be open to the unit owners except during executive sessions.” Executive session may be entered only during a regular or special meeting, for five listed purposes, and “No final vote or action may be taken during an executive session.”
• An anti-evasion clause. The board “may not use incidental or social gatherings of board members or any other method to evade the open meeting requirements.”
• Ten days' notice of each board meeting to owners, with the agenda, and board materials distributed in advance must be made “reasonably available to unit owners” — excluding unapproved minutes and executive-session materials.
• A right to speak. “Unit owners shall be given a reasonable opportunity at any meeting to comment regarding any matter affecting the common interest community or the association.”

The 60-day trap most owners never see

Section 3-108(b)(10) provides that a board action taken without complying with the section “is valid unless set aside by a court”, and a challenge “may not be brought more than 60 days after the minutes … are approved or the record of that action is distributed to unit owners, whichever is later.”

An owner who could not attend, did not learn what happened for a quarter, and then objected is out of time. That is the practical argument for remote access that H.562 never got to make.

And the older communities are outside it entirely

Section 3-108 reaches common interest communities created before January 1, 1999 only through 27A V.S.A. § 1-204(a)(2), and only as to events and circumstances occurring after December 31, 2011. That list also expressly “do[es] not invalidate existing provisions of the declarations, bylaws, plats, or plans” of those communities.

So a pre-1999 Vermont condominium whose bylaws set a different meeting regime keeps it.

What to watch next

H.562 is the only meeting-related common-interest bill of the biennium. A full-text sweep of the 2025–2026 session turns up no bill on association fines, board elections, records access, proxies, or assessment liens as such. Owner-governance mechanics were not on Vermont's legislative agenda in 2026; covenant overrides were.