Why the freeze is the interesting fact

It is not inertia. Vermont's 2026 legislature was unusually active on community associations — two acts amended covenant law, a third ordered a study, and a fourth added a section to the management chapter for the first time in a decade. The Legislature was in this statute. It simply did not touch governance.

The bills that would have are all identifiable, and they all died:

• H.562 would have required owner meetings to be accessible by telephone or video. One committee date.
• S.305 and S.328 as introduced carried covenant overrides on leasing and family child care. Removed or never heard.
• H.537 on vegetable gardens passed the House and died in the Senate.
• H.589 would have created a statute of repose. Three committee dates, no vote.
• H.172 would have created a state resource centre. Two committee dates across two years.

A full-text sweep of the 2025–2026 biennium finds zero bills on association fines, board elections, records or document access, proxies, reserve studies or reserve funds, assessment liens or foreclosure as such. Zero on condominium master policies, association deductibles or insurer nonrenewal. Zero licensing community association managers. Zero creating an ombudsman or registry.

What the 2013-era chapter still gives an owner

It is more than the freeze suggests. The chapter is the 1994 uniform act with the 2008 amendments bolted on effective January 1, 2012, and those amendments were substantial:

The super lien. Section 3-116(c) puts the association ahead of a first mortgage “to the extent of the common expense assessments based on the periodic budget adopted by the association pursuant to subsection 3-115(a) … that would have become due in the absence of acceleration during the six months immediately preceding institution of an action to enforce the lien.” Recording the declaration is notice and perfection; no separate filing is needed.

Mandatory two-way fee shifting in lien actions. Section 3-116(h): a judgment or decree “shall include an award of costs and reasonable attorney's fees to the prevailing party.”

A foreclosure floor. Section 3-116(m)'s three-month, payment-plan and unit-specific board-vote requirements.

A payment-application order. Section 3-116(n): assessments first, then late charges, then fees and costs, then everything else — which blocks applying payments to fines to keep an owner perpetually delinquent.

An enforcement-discretion standard. Section 3-102(g) and (h) provide that the board has no duty to take enforcement action where the legal position does not justify it, where the covenant is likely to be construed as inconsistent with law, where the violation “is not so material as to be objectionable to a reasonable person”, or where enforcement is not in the association's best interests — “but the executive board may not be arbitrary or capricious in taking enforcement action.” Vermont's selective-enforcement rule is statutory, not just common law.

A communication duty. Section 3-102(i): the board “shall establish a reasonable method for unit owners to communicate among themselves and with the executive board.”

The catch

Almost none of Chapter 3 reaches Vermont communities created before January 1, 1999. The § 1-204 retroactive lists pick up §§ 3-102(a)(1)–(6) and (11)–(16), 3-111, 3-116, 3-118 from 1999, and §§ 3-103, 3-108, 3-110, 3-124 from 2012. The rest — including §§ 3-107, 3-115, 3-120, 3-122 and 3-123 — does not reach back at all.

What to watch next

The Act 179 study due November 15, 2026 is about covenants, not governance. Nothing currently scheduled in Vermont would change Chapter 3.