Governor Rocks HOA World With Veto

by Mark Smiley | Jun 21, 2019 | General Featured

As Licensing Disappears For Property Managers, HOA Issues Rise To The Fore

by Ruthy Wexler

Everyone thought HB 1212 would pass.

What House Bill 19-1212 did was reinstate the licensing program for Community Association Managers (CAMs), which was set to expire July 1, 2019. The bill extended CAM licensing for just one year, during which time stakeholders were charged with exploring the issue.

As legislators put HB 1212 together, the usual suspects tried to shape it. Homeowner advocate Stan Hrincevich, pleaded for the inclusion of additional homeowner protections; e.g., ensuring managers document and disclose fees; while the Colorado Legislative Action Committee — legal arm of CAI (Community Association Institute), an international lobby representing management companies, property managers, HOA attorneys and other benefiting vendors — fought to keep such regulatory measures out.

The bill’s sponsors — Representatives Monica Duran and Brianna Titone, Senators Nancy Todd and Rhonda Fields — ended up incorporating most of CAI’s requests, but none from Hrincevich, who voiced disappointment but also relief that “CAM licensing would be kept alive.” The bill passed the Assembly and Senate.

Then on May 31, Governor Jared Polis vetoed HB 1212. Ever since, the Colorado HOA world has been trying to understand what lies ahead.

What’s The Big Deal?

In his two-page veto letter, Polis expressed concerns over “occupational licensing” — the subject of three of the five bills he’d vetoed (out of 460 passed). Such licensing, he said, might “… prevent minorities and the economically disadvantaged from … access[ing] occupations.”

Polis’s concerns, many feel, had little to do with CAM licensing, an issue one homeowner described as the “tip of an iceberg with huge dangerous issues below everyone is afraid to fight.”

“Here’s the essence,” says Hrincevich. “The HOA Property Manager Licensing law was the only path homeowners had to address wrongdoing on the part of a manager.”

Colorado homeowners had no recourse at all — short of going to court, which was too costly and intimidating to be a real option — until 2015, when Colorado passed a law that regulated HOA property managers. Individuals had to pass background checks, get certified, pay a fee and pass an exam, in order to earn a CAM license.

At that point, if a homeowner believed their property manager was behaving illegally, they could file a complaint, citing their CAM’s license number, with the Real Estate Division inside DORA, which had awarded that CAM license — and could take it away.

The process was slow, the results not always to the homeowner’s liking, but, says homeowner and retired financial analyst Barb DeHart, “It allowed homeowners not to feel entirely helpless.”

All Counties Heard From

Post Polis’s veto, reactions varied widely. Legislators, believing they’d done what was necessary to pass the bill, felt betrayed. “I was completely shocked,” said Duran. “Greatly disappointed. The work we’d done to protect homeowners … has been undone.”

HOA homeowners who had been following this issue felt betrayed also, and afraid. “It’s bad enough with [CAM] licensing,” wrote P., a Denver homeowner fearing reprisal from her property manager. “What will [name of manager] do with no oversight at all??”

 “As of July 1,” said HOA activist Andrea Antico. “management companies … can do anything they want.”

Realtors were appalled. Live Urban Real Estate listed possible “outcomes of this loss of consumer protection.” Linda Chapman, realtor for over 35 years, called the veto “unconscionable.” She explained, “Management companies and property managers handle millions and millions of dollars of other people’s money. All other industries performing fiduciary duties are required to be licensed and regulated. Except CAMs.”

HOA attorneys appeared lighthearted. “Community association manager licensing is no more!” wrote Elina Gilbert of Altitude Law, in a blog titled, Why Oh Why Did Manager Licensing Die? One HOA attorney described colleagues as “… happily anticipating lots of business …”

One community manager, Sue McClure, said the veto felt like a “slap in the face to those of us that have made the effort to … be professional,” while another, Joe Felice, said he agreed with the Governor. “I don’t believe licensing helped homeowners or associations in any substantive way. … “

Property manager Alec Hrynevich, of Accord Management, said, “I’m not opposed to licensing. But it doesn’t do in this case what it’s supposed to do.”

More than a few managers and homeowners agreed that abuses within HOAs would not necessarily have been prevented if CAM licensing was in effect.

Change The Conversation

The HOA Office releases a report each year that summarizes the complaints they’ve received from homeowners. In 2018, high on the list was management companies and property managers not following their HOA’s governing documents; close behind were poor manager communication, selective enforcement of covenants and failure to produce records, required under Colorado HOA law.

Accompanying Polis’s veto was an Executive Order, number D 2019 006, directing DORA to “lead a … comprehensive review of CAMs and HOAs.” Many homeowners felt excited at the prospect of an open conversation about HOAs.

Since Polis took office, he’s made it clear how hard he will push for issues he is passionate about, like education and health care. He has not made it clear if HOA reform is one of those issues, although Hrincevich noted, “Leaving out further consumer protections [in HB 1212] is what Polis seemed mostly to object to.”

 What CAI appears to mostly object to is regulation within HOAs. A map on their website resembles a campaign war room, blue outlining the few states with CAM licensing; click on each state and see what stage the legal battle around that issue has reached. “Stay up to date on CAM licensing and its impact on associations,” encourages CAI Senior Vice President Dawn Bauman.

“With the veto of HB 19-1212,” states Polis in his Executive Order, “the State has an opportunity to change the conversation about … CAMs and HOAs.” As per that order, stakeholder meetings will be held on August 14 and 29, September 12 and October 8 at the DORA offices. Registration is open.

Never Let Hate Take Root In Your Heart

by Mark Smiley | May 25, 2019 | General Featured

Holocaust Survivor Shares Memories And Advice

by Ruthy Wexler

At 98, Jack Welner’s face shines with the eager ebullience of a 6-year-old. His eyes twinkle with fun. That’s the kind of boy Welner was back in Lodz, Poland — helpful, fun-loving, excited about life — and by all accounts, that’s the kind of man he became. In between, however, came the Holocaust, and — because Welner is Jewish — unimaginable suffering.

Through Auschwitz, Dachau, labor camps, a death march — how, people ask, did you stay the same person? Looking back over the years, Welner explains how he kept bitterness out of his heart and held onto the twinkle in his eye.

Take This, You’ll Need It

It’s not that Welner forgot what happened. He shares memories so vivid, you are there: watching how fast the Germans turn a corner of Lodz into a barbed wire ghetto; seeing guards shoot Jews in the ghetto streets “just for practice”; pretending — along with the seven other family members crammed into one room with no toilet or running water — that the beet leaves your mother salted and fried taste just like herring.

“We were starving [in the ghetto],” recalls Welner. “Just before we got on the train [for Auschwitz], we got a little piece of bread. Late that night, we arrived. I helped mother down from the train. She still had her bread. She pushed it into my hand. ‘Here. Take this. You’ll need it.’”

Welner’s eyes fill with tears. “Those were the last words my mother said to me.”

Look For Luck

After the war, when Welner was in a safer place — Denver, CO! — and heard “even a little bit of antisemitism” he’d speak up. “I left Poland to get rid of SOBs like you, so you better shut up.”

“Later,” he adds, “we’d become friends.”

But back when hatred of Jews was law, Welner searched for small ways to survive. In a labor camp near Dachau, a guard kept beating Welner with a 2×4 so brutally, “I knew I would die if he kept it up … so I sank to the ground and began crying. Not so much from pain, but I had to … do something.”

Welner adds emphatically: “In my mind, I was saying, ‘I will survive you, you SOB!’”

Later on in that camp, “… my luck changed. A machine operator took a liking to me. I was suffering from an ulcer. He let me lie down. He brought me rinds of bread to eat.

“He saved my life,” concludes Welner, who, after the war, traveled twice to Munich to bring food to that guard.

Welner was still able to feel empathy.

Many had lost that capacity.

“I had a cousin, blonde, she survived by working as a maid in a Warsaw hotel, disguised as a Christian,” Welner recalls. “When the [Warsaw] ghetto was burning, someone laughed, ‘Look, the bedbugs are frying.’ Her family was inside that ghetto and she had to stand there, crying, saying nothing …”

Welner shakes his head. He tells how, upon arriving back in Lodz after being liberated, the first words he heard from a Christian were, “Oh, a lot of you Jews are still alive.”

 L’Chaim (To Life)

Welner shares such memories seriously, like one delivering a valuable package. Now one more person knows and will not forget. But he is not inclined to dwell on or analyze the horror. Asked about antisemitism, Welner shrugs. “That’s how it was. Always the Jew was the scapegoat.”

When the subject turns, however, to his three children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, Welner’s face lights up like a 100-candle birthday cake. He enthuses at length about each one. It glows when he converses about travel or music. And when he sings.

Welner loves to sing.

 “I love Italian,” he rhapsodizes. “I still remember songs from Italy [where he was in a DP camp].”

In the ghetto, Welner recalls, there was a Jewish composer who wrote satiric songs. Welner sings one in Yiddish, then translates: “Such a disaster, you have to eat every day, the stomach always wants more and more…

“We needed to laugh,” he recalls.

Welner adores jokes. Laughing uproariously (but never ruining the punch line), Welner tells a joke about the cow from Minsk. The farmer and the bull. The one where two friends enter a bakery: “‘Moishe, look at that wonderful bagel!’ ‘Oh, but it’s got a big hole in the middle!”’

Optimist

“I see the bagel, not the hole,” Welner explains. “I’m an optimist.”

At 31, Welner anticipated a happy future when he met a beautiful girl, Adele. They married and moved to Denver. Seven years later, Adele died, leaving Welner with three small children and a broken heart.

Welner moved to Israel for five years to be near his sisters, then back to Denver, where he worked as a carpenter and raised his kids. Despite the disappointment of a subsequent marriage not working out, “My father always enjoyed life,” recalls Welner’s daughter Beverly. “Our home was filled with love and laughter.”

As a Holocaust Survivor, Welner spoke to schools and groups in Denver and surrounding areas. Then in 1995, the Shoah Foundation sent Lori Goldberg to interview Welner.      

The two connected.

“We became best friends, sharing life’s joys and challenges,” says Goldberg, who, coincidentally, in the first years of their relationship, saw Welner on Tuesdays.

“He was my Morrie,” she says, alluding to the book, Tuesdays with Morrie. “From Jack, I learned about courage, resiliency, hope, and love.”

My Motto

“Jack has taught me, no matter how difficult life can be, one should never give up hope, one should never stop loving,” said Goldberg.

“My motto,” Welner says, “is, ‘Don’t let the past ruin your future. If you live in the past, you don’t have a future.’”         

“I receive so much more from Jack than I could ever give,” says Welner’s caregiver, Linda Chambers. “It is an honor to know him. He will not allow hate to grow in his heart.”