Jeanne Hamilton

I'm a little late but thank you for this reply. It is very helpful.

Our bylaws are very vague on a number of issues. The only reference to minutes is under the heading of "Officers: Powers and Duties", Secretary is to "keep the minutes of all such meetings..." That's it. Nothing else.

In the few draft versions that are published, what you will not see is the secretary presenting previous meeting minutes for approval. It's not part of Old Business or New Business. There is a conflict between Robert's Rules and state law in regards to what owners/members are entitled to. Our state statute dictates that minutes must be made available for all homeowners to peruse. I found it odd that the request to access all of the minutes was denied not based upon state law but rather Robert's Rules of Order.

Our condominium association Board of Directors (BOD) has published very, very few minutes of their meetings for the past 5 years and what they have sparingly published are draft minutes with the last one being for a January 2023 BOD meeting. The BOD president himself announced on Facebook that DRAFT minutes were published to the HOA website and nearly a year later those minutes are still an unapproved draft version. When a group of owners asked to see all of the draft minutes of other meetings, these were denied to them with the HOA’s attorney claiming that the draft minutes were “confidential” because, according to Robert’s Rules of Order, minutes are not official until they are approved. But are they confidential? The attorney isn't claiming that draft minutes do not exist, he's using Robert's Rules of Order to claim they are confidential. I don’t think the HOA legal counsel is aware that the BOD has waived confidentiality of draft minutes by publishing them to the HOA owners’ portal. My understanding of RONR is that it refers to the “secretary’s draft of the minutes,” “the secretary’s draft”, and “a draft of the minutes of the preceding meeting” and there is nothing in RONR that restricts in any way posting or distributing those “secretary’s draft of the minutes,” etc. Further, the NC BAR Association’s “Common Interest Communities, 2nd Edition” does not mention draft BOD meeting minutes as being confidential. I’ve done my best to read and research but not being a parliamentarian, I’m wondering if my conclusions are accurate. I am hoping you can give some illumination to what I view as an odd interpretation of Robert’s Rules of Order.