What is CLAC?
The California Legislative Action Committee (CLAC) is a volunteer committee of the Community Associations Institute (CAI) and consists of homeowners and professionals serving community associations. CAI is the largest professional and advocacy organization in America dedicated to monitoring legislation, educating elected state lawmakers, and protecting the interests of those living in community associations.
CLAC .....is a non-profit, nonpartisan committee comprised of 2 Delegates and 1 Liaison from each CAI California chapter.
• Represents 9,000,000 homeowners and property owners in more than 50,000 associations throughout California.
• Is comprised of association homeowners, board members, service vendors and professionals.
• Is not a PAC (Political Action Committee), and makes no financial campaign contributions.
• Depends solely on the donations of the community associations and those who serve HOA members and Boards.
CLAC’s Mission:
To safeguard and improve the community association lifestyle and property values by advocating a reasonable balance between state statutory requirements and the ability and authority of individual homeowners to govern themselves through their community associations.
What does CLAC do?
• CLAC continuously reviews and evaluates proposed legislation.
• CLAC lobbies legislators, key staff, other trade groups, and testifies in committee regarding legislative bills that effect HOAs.
• CLAC launched and hosts a 'Legislative Day in the Capitol' event every spring, an event that brings HOA folks together to lobby their legislators on the hot issues.
• CLAC issues free email alerts on key bills to those on our 'CLACTRAC' list who have requested this information.
• CLAC annually hosts an 'HOA Roundtable' among seniors, owners, managers, attorneys, realtors, lenders, and other legislative stakeholders.
• CLAC retains two professional, veteran lobbyists and association activists (Skip Daum, Capitol Communications Group and Ron Kingston, California Political Consulting Group) to lead our Sacramento efforts.
Briefly, CLAC...
• Is a non-profit Statewide committee of the Community Association Institute (CAI)
• Educates Legislators about CID living and governance
• Serves approximately 9,000,000 homeowners residing in more than 50,000 community associations throughout California
• Is not a PAC (Political Action Committee), and makes no political contributions
• Functions solely on the donations of the community associations it represents
• The legislation we monitor, support, or oppose has a direct impact on the community associations you manage, and perhaps you or your company.
How Does CLAC Accomplish Its Goals?
• Reviews and takes positions on all legislative bills affecting homeowners associations
• Hosts a “Legislative Day in the Capitol” event each year to educate legislators
• Alerts HOA’s and their managers about important legislation
CLAC’s Accomplishments
• CAI-CLAC testified and lobbied legislators, capitol staff and other lobbying organizations to the point where their bills were amended to our satisfaction. Sometimes this meant we agreed to less harmful provisions; other times we simply altered the bill to our complete satisfaction.
• We monitored more than 7,000 bills each session and involved ourselves in more than 20 “hot” bills that effected our communities.
• Lead the fight to defeat or amend bills that statutorily prescribed how associations shall deal with motorcycles, water usage, artificial turf, election of boards of directors, rental restrictions, debt collection, foreclosures and pets. (All these bills micromanaged community associations and removed their local authority to self-govern.)
• We helped stop the “forced entry” telecommunications bill which required HOAs to provide or construct space to install all the equipment for free.
• We had our say in construction defect legislation to ensure associations were treated fairly.
• We were responsible for the removal of HOAs from a bill that would have required all lead based paint be removed or encapsulated at a cost of untold hundreds of millions of dollars.
• We regularly participated in the review and rewrite of the Davis Stirling Act by the California Law Revision Commission.
• We conducted a “CID Poll” to obtain local opinions on issues and proposed legislation; the poll results were communicated to legislators.
• We faithfully represent you, and enjoy the trust of other lobbying organizations and legislators.
• We resolved bills dealing with foreclosures and successfully sponsored a bill to allow for blanket recordations saving HOAs thousands of dollars in foreclosures. This was called the HOA Solvency Act.
