HOA bill, see you in 2009

Saturday, June 16, 2007 | 7:36 a.m.

Gov. Jim Gibbons' veto Friday of legislation governing homeowners associations means that the 2009 legislative session will begin with a vote to overturn his decision.

Sen. Mike Schneider, a Las Vegas Democrat who co-sponsored the bill, predicted the veto will easily be overridden. Sixty-one of 63 legislators voted to pass the bill shortly before the 2007 Legislature adjourned.

"It'll be a hell of a way to start a session," said Schneider, who said the governor called him early Friday to tell him about the veto. Gibbons will try to get Republican lawmakers to uphold the veto, "but his Republicans are flipping on him in the Assembly for sure," Schneider said.

Phone calls by the Sun to the governor's office Friday were not answered.

Schneider said the governor told him he vetoed the bill because of a provision that would allow homeowners to install exterior shutters on their homes.

Those shutters would amount to a "taking " from other homeowners because the underlying law says that condo owners also collectively own the airspace in the condominium complex. So if a homeowner puts up shutters outside his own windows, it's tantamount to putting them up in someone else's airspace.

Schneider called that explanation a smokescreen . The real reason for the governor's veto, he said, is "pressure from campaign donors. He sold the people of Nevada down the drain - and he's (angered) a lot of legislators in the process."

The veto kills an amendment to the existing law that would have allowed HOA members to install exterior shutters without the association's approval. It also eliminates a revision that would have give n HOA executive boards power to levy fees for reserve funds without a vote of all members. A third item would have barred security guards from using radar guns to stop and ticket speeders in gated communities.

Schneider said the governor also killed some new safeguards against the misuse of HOA funds. One required HOA board members to get two signatures, instead of one, to write checks on association funds. The other required association managers to be bonded, so that if money went missing, there would be a way to recoup it.

Schneider has said that Gibbons had told him he would sign the bill. But after the Sun wrote about the bill June 8, angry homeowners began urging a veto.