T.H. from Collier County, Florida writes:
Dear Mister Condo,
HOA held closed door meeting to discuss termination of alleged illegal aliens working as landscape personnel and replace in house landscaping services with outside contractor. A vote of board members was taken and 3 of 5 voted to engage outside landscape company and terminate illegal aliens and two other legal employees. HOA President, who was NOT happy with this result, sent out an email to the entire community identifying, by name, how each HOA board member voted. Is it legal for the names of each board member and their vote cast to be revealed to the public when the vote was taken in a closed-door board meeting?
Mister Condo replies:
T.H., since I am not an attorney, I offer no legal opinions. Legal or not, voting records of Board Members are records that unit owners are entitled to view (once they have been properly recorded and submitted as association records). So, even though it may have been bad form to release this information, it would eventually be available to association members. Board meetings are generally open to the association members to attend. The sensitive nature of this meeting caused the Board to hold an Executive Meeting. The President should have respected that decision and waited until the Minutes of the Meeting were released. If your governing documents have a penalty for an officer not following protocol and another Board member or association member wish to act on that rule, they may. My guess is that this matter will be forgotten until election time when it might matter if the association isn’t pleased with this President’s performance. All the best!