HOA Legi-Slate

Last year the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Pre-Judgment Interest in construction defect actions is only payable from the time the plaintiff was deprived of the money or value of a property.  This ruling put into doubt at what point pre-judgment interest is calculated in Construction Defect Actions involving associations.  In an effort to clarify this issue, the Senate introduced "The Homeowners Protection Act of 2009" also known as SB 09-246.  The legislative intent of this bill is to "Require the award of interest to be paid as damages for a delay in performing an obligation, on construction defect claims, to encourage speedy resolution of claims, discourage meritorious claim payment delays, reduce the need for lengthy and costly construction defect lawsuits and trials".  In short, this bill will enable associations to recover prejudgment interest during the notice of claim and lawsuit process. The Senate has scheduled a hearing on this bill on April 1, 2009 at 1:30 PM.  You are encouraged to attend and support the Homeowners Protection Act of 2009.  You can also contact your state representative and senator to support SB 09-246.  Representative and Senate contact information can be found by clicking here.

This is a good bill. But my question is why is the legislature always having to "clean up" prior legislation? Instead of knee-jerking in response to issues (as was the case with SB 05-100) why can't they spend time, listen to constituents and study all sides of an issue before writing laws. And, don't they have any atorneys up there at the Statehouse who can advise them of these pitfalls? It just seems to me that they are always in such a hurry to pass their own legislation, and this does not benefit the people. I know the legislative session is short, but there's always next year. And most of the laws they pass legislate things that they have no business legislating. Protecting consumers is good government. Interference with private contracts betweeen homeowners and their HOAs is not. Nor is requiring all cats to have tags or microchips, or requiring all mobile-home operators to have weather-band radios. Just because something is a good idea doesn't mean we need to have a law mandating it. We Americans are 'way over-regulated.