Today is election day for the US. Tomorrow is the annual meeting for my homeowners association. I’m looking at a fraudulent proxy statement issued in my name for that HOA annual meeting.
We’ve gotten out of the habit of treating fraud seriously, depending on the high reputational penalties associated with getting caught doing such things in the first world.
My HOA’s budget is tiny, about an eighth of a million. The amount of energy being spent on controlling it is beyond foolish.
I assume you plan to attend.
I have had an interesting experience in local government where ethics often go to die.
Back in, I think, 2002, I got a last minute flyer about the city council election in the small city where I live. I learned, I’ve forgotten how, that it was a lie put out too late for the candidate to respond.
I got annoyed and contacted a local attorney who had organized a good government committee called The Committee for Integrity in Government.
I joined it. At the time the city was being run by a small clique of local officials, some of whom had ambitions for higher office.
To make a long story short, we got organized and solicited some candidates to run against the incumbents. By local activism, we got our candidates elected.
Then, we found out that the elected reformers made new friends and turned out no better than the ones we had defeated.
The committee pretty much dissolved. One of the faithless “reform” candidates got very friendly with the LA Times, which ran a piece attacking the Committee. I responded. That letter concerned the change of heart by the candidate who had first gotten us to try to reform the city government. Sort of ironic.
We pretty much gave up on reform. Maybe Trump will do better.
Pretty much the whole TEA party experience Mike. Quite a few elected here to positions – local, state, and national – on our votes and money. Damn near every one of them turned on us after being elected.
My HOA’s budget is tiny, about an eighth of a million. The amount of energy being spent on controlling it is beyond foolish.
Which is why the term “condo nazi” came into use. I am a member of my HOA’s board. A lot of our time is spent with people who would rather complain to the HOA than pay for what the really need- time with a therapist. But as it costs them no money to complain to the HOA, that explains it.
” Damn near every one of them turned on us after being elected.”
We had one woman on the city council who was elected before we got organized and who was a rare stalwart. She is little and has MS but she would sit down and go through the city check register item by item and ask the city manager what the odd items were for. It was amazing what she found. She was hated.
I got to know her because the other city council members refused to approve her nominees for the city commissions,. There was one other member who was pretty good but he did not have her courage. Her commission nominations would be voted down 3 to 2. Finally, someone asked me if I would be willing to serve and she nominated me. I had operated on one of the hostile council members and she could not very well vote against me so I was confirmed. That kind of broke the logjam and we went on with less acrimony.
One reason I liked Sarah Palin so much in 2008 was because she reminded me of this woman. The big burly city manager who was a complete ass, finally resigned and sued the city alleging she had harassed him. His pals on the council gave him a $500,000 settlement, She is about 5- 2.
Eventually, her husband got tired of the hassle and insisted she not run for re-election.
I don’t follow city politics anymore.
Jill just went to vote and it took an hour. I don’t know what is happening.
It is certainly interesting. ?Trump landslide ? Hillary landslide ? Tie?
TM, many HOAs have a minimum requirement for actions, especially legal.
I have served on the HOA Board of my community. Every year we send out requests for votes or for proxys. We need (by documents) one half of 80% to do anything, including changes to the documents originally written by the developer. When we wanted to sue the developer for lapses in construction which the homeowners had to make good (state and local building codes) all the members of the board had to go house to house to ask for proxies and only made it because a judge ruled that the 80% rule was unreasonable. We get about 1 1/2 percent on votes for the board in a community of about 2000. It is very frustrating – communicating with residents is difficult.