Members of Community Associations Institute ("CAI") are receiving notification today from the Rocky Mountain and Southern Colorado Chapters of CAI informing them that the Colorado Legislative Action Committee of CAI ("CLAC") has submitted a Sunrise Application to the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies ("DORA") to investigate the need for licensing community association managers in Colorado. Here’s the communication that has been distributed to Rocky Mountain Chapter members from the Chapter President Brian TerHark:
"Dear CAI-RMC member:
I wanted to share with you that today, the Colorado Legislative Action Committee (CLAC) submitted a Sunrise Review Application to the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) to evaluate the need for licensing Colorado community association managers.
Licensure of Colorado association managers is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when.’
Rather than being reactive and on the back end of this issue, CLAC decided to take the lead by submitting the Sunrise Review Application.
CLAC’s position was based upon your feedback. Committee members solicited your views on manager licensing through focus groups and two surveys – one that targeted HOA board members and managers and one specific to community association managers. What they heard was an overwhelming need for manager licensing in Colorado.
So what are our next steps? It depends on DORA’s findings in the Sunrise review. Should DORA rule there is a need for manager licensing, CLAC could work to propose licensing legislation in the 2012 session. DORA has 120 days to make that decision.
In the meantime, I encourage you to read the press release about the application. I also encourage you to contact either myself or anyone on the CLAC manager licensing task force – Dee Wolfe, Chris Pacetti, Sue Daigle, Jim Flippin, Jeff Kutzer, Jim Cowell, Molly Foley-Healy or Tim Larson to share your opinion or ask questions.
If our profession is to be regulated, let’s be proactive in developing a regulatory process that meets our needs and the needs of the communities we serve."
Criteria DORA Will Utilize to Review the Sunrise Application
It’s important to point out that the sunrise process is the first step in determining whether the licensure of community association managers is necessary and appropriate. In reviewing the Sunrise Application, DORA is required to consider the following criteria:
"1. Whether the unregulated practice of the occupation or profession clearly harms or endangers the health, safety or welfare of the public, and whether the potential for harm is easily recognizable and not remote or dependent on tenuous argument;
2. Whether the public needs, and can be reasonably expected to benefit from, an assurance of initial and continuing professional or occupational competence; and
3. Whether the public can be adequately protected by other means in a more cost-effective manner."
It will be fascinating to see whether DORA ulitmately determines that the licensure of community association managers would benefit the public. Until DORA makes its final determination on the Sunrise Application, no decision on proceeding with the introduction of manager licensure legislation can be made.