LAC REPORTS


and the relevant tax section disappeared...forever. That’s how it works!”


When I asked T


Following a term of service on our community’s board, I was nominated to serve as a delegate to the CAI PA Legislative Action Committee (PA LAC) and wanted to learn more about the PA LAC and its accomplishments. The role of the LAC is to advocate for common interest ownership communities (CIOCs) such as co-ops, condominiums, and homeowner associations. Delegates of the PA LAC are attorneys, community managers, and CIOC homeowners.


I learned about one of the LAC’s most significant achievements from Deb Boyle, an immediate past president of the Hamlet Property Owners Association in the Poconos. When I contacted Deb to solicit her community’s annual financial support of the LAC, she shared what was to me a fascinating story. She wrote in an email, “Around 1999 or 2000, I was a CPA in Stroudsburg with several local planned POAs as clients; while attending a seminar on massive PA tax changes we found that the law included taxation on the ‘net income’ of community associations of any type (condos, over 55 and all).


I alerted Attorney Alan Young


who was on the LAC then, and it turned out no one was aware of this ‘small’ clause in the new law.”


Deb went on to say that, “Young and the committee went to work


Tony Campisi,


Executive Director of the CAI Keystone Chapter, what he believed to be a significant LAC win, he shared a CAI Legislative Update from Spring of 2006 detailing the defeat of House Bill 1467 regarding construction defect litigation. Then Governor Ed Rendell, in vetoing this Bill, referenced the three main arguments that CAI used to support its defeat.


The first was no evidence of need for this Bill in PA. The second reason, cited by Steven Sugarman, Esq., CCAL, with Steven L. Sugarman & Associates, Chair of the LAC at the time, was that these new procedures would have, “substantially increased the dispute resolution process and the costs for the consumer.” Finally, CAI demonstrated that alternate dispute resolution procedures were already in place in the Commonwealth with most builder contracts containing mandatory arbitration clauses.


In vetoing the Bill, Rendell stated, “homebuilders who have mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts are afforded the same, if not greater, protections as those outlined in House Bill 1467.”


Carl Weiner, Esq., CCAL, with Hamburg Rubin Mullin Maxwell & Lupin and a LAC delegate, “is proudest of the amendment to the Condominium Act and Planned Community Act which is identified as Act 37 of 2015, which addressed a


18 November | December 2021


problem created by an adverse appellate court decision that essentially allowed municipalities to interfere with the creation of condominiums and planned communities out of existing developments containing residential buildings, as well as shopping centers and industrial centers.”


Mr. Weiner went on to say, “after many months of negotiation with counsel for Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, a politically powerful organization, and with the support of Senate leadership, we were able to get legislation passed which clearly established that creation of a condominium or a planned community out of an existing development does not require municipal approval.”


To M Marshal Granor, Esq., CCAL, with


Granor & Granor PC, the important change he would talk about, “is the elevation of CAI’s LAC from ‘just one of those group who come to Harrisburg once a year’ to having a professional lobbying firm who makes us much more of a force to the legislature.”


Mr. Granor is referring to our partnership with Pugliese Associates, our lobbying firm with offices directly across the street from the Capitol.


In a normal, non-pandemic year, members of the PA LAC and other CAI members journey to Harrisburg for the LAC’s annual Advocacy Summit. LAC delegates break out into small teams of 2 or 3 and spend


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