Suburban greed at Florida’s largest homeowners’ association should spur HOA changes | Opinion
After years of “mafia” allegations, fee hikes of 300%-400% and, eventually, the arrests of board members for allegedly stealing $2 million, the largest homeowners’ association in Florida did what seemed impossible just a few months ago: It held a clean election.
What a relief.
The HOA at the Hammocks in suburban Miami-Dade County made headlines last year when the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office charged the former HOA president, Marglli Gallego, her husband and two others with operating what amounted to a “criminal enterprise” for years. Apparently, board members had been routinely siphoning money from their neighbors’ maintenance fees, partly by writing HOA checks to phony companies that didn’t do the work.
An HOA horror story emerged. There were accusations of racketeering, money laundering, fabricating evidence and using shell companies to shield the board’s maneuvers — along with a whopping 55 different bank accounts. Homeowners tried to oust the board, but during one election, hundreds of residents waiting in line weren’t allowed to vote because of a bomb threat that turned out to be fake. Allegations of bribery and ballot-tampering flew.
Contrast that turmoil and distrust with the peaceful election last week, when seven new board members were chosen and took office.
Idalmen “Chicky” Ardisson — elected with the most votes, 926 — said it was a “secure and fair election.” She has lived in the West Kendall development for 30 years, she told the Miami Herald, and said the election was the best one she’d seen.
“My vision is to ensure we get what we’re paying for,” Ardisson said. “But we have a lot of catching up to do after years of corruption and turmoil.”
Long, bad dream
We can only imagine that for the rest of the 18,000 residents of the Hammocks, the execution of an honest-to-God real election without controversy or the growing suspicion that they were being fleeced by their own neighbors must have felt like waking up from a long, bad dream.
These are people who had been fighting what they called the “Gallego Mafia” for years. Getting to this day, Ardisson said, took seven years and a small band of residents who refused to give up.
“Little by little it grew as we cut through the apathy to show residents how they were being exploited and ripped off,” she said. “We proved that people have the power to make change if they don’t give up.”
But Ardisson and the others should never have had to go through all this. There’s legislation under consideration in Tallahassee, and backed by Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, that would help protect homeowners from abusive HOA boards by strengthening laws against fraud and mismanagement. House Bill 919 and Senate Bill 1114 would address holes in current law, including making sure that homeowners’ association records are publicly accessible.
That was a huge problem during the Hammocks investigation when, over and over, the association refused to comply with subpoenas from the Miami-Dade prosecutors. An attorney for the board even told a Miami-Dade judge the board voted to ignore a judge’s order because “the board doesn’t trust the state.” And when investigators finally got access to the board’s office? One set of documents was found hidden under the floor of the office.
It’s abundantly clear that Florida needs to crack down on HOAs, and that current law is far too weak. The bills are making their way through the committee process in Tallahassee, but they need to become a priority.
The new board, in the meantime, has a lot of work ahead. It has to get the HOA’s books in order — that’s Job No. 1. But equally important will be operating with complete transparency. If the new board has any hope of rebuilding trust, that will be critical. The previous board hadn’t met in public for 4 1/2 years.
We’ve seen how that ended. For the sake of all of Hammocks homeowners, we hope that kind of blatant mismanagement firmly is in the past, for this HOA and all the others in Florida. It’s time for the Hammocks to step down as the poster child for HOAs gone wild.
