EVP Report: 2025 Maryland General Assembly Session

2025 Maryland General Assembly Session – The General Assembly began its 447^th Session on Jan. 8. We expect several bills from previous sessions to be reintroduced and some new bills as well. Bills that have been seen before include several that Delegate Marvin Holmes will re-introduce: Licensing of Property Managers; Establishing a Task Force on Common Ownership Communities; Governing Bodies and Annual Meetings; a Governing Document Database; Board Member Training; and Reserve Account Funding.

Montgomery Village Foundation (MVF) also worked with Senator Nancy King to prepare two bills for proposal this Session. The first would allow condominium boards to adopt budgets of up to a 5% increase without Council of Unit Owners approval. Currently, in some condominium by-laws and master deeds, an annual assessment cannot be adopted by a condominium board without the approval of unit owners. This in turn prevents the condominium board from raising assessments to cover necessary increases for services, contracts and regular maintenance of the condominium. The inability to properly care for the condominium conflicts with a board’s fiduciary duty. The proposal could add language to the Maryland Condominium Act to allow certain condominium boards to approve a budget with no more than a 5% increase to the annual assessment, despite failure of owners to approve it.

The second bill seeks to raise the limit on deductibles collectible from condominium unit owners from $10,000 to $20,000. Currently, the Maryland Condo Act limits the amount a condominium association can require a unit owner to contribute to a Master Policy deductible to $10,000 (last raised in 2020). With a recent increase in insurance premiums and claims, many condominiums are not adequately able to budget for claims. Adjusting the contributable amount would allow associations to adequately budget for claims and share more responsibility with individual unit owners.

As the Session continues, and more bills emerge, MVF will continue to provide information to the MVF communities about bills that could affect them.

M83 Public Hearing – I attended the Montgomery County Planning Board’s third Public Hearing on the Technical Update to the Master Plan of Highways and Transitways (MPOHT) on Jan. 9, which focused on the question of retaining or removing MidCounty Highway Extended (M-83) from the plan. At the hearing, I provided additional testimony advocating MVF’s position to remove M-83 from the MPOHT. As expected, opinions were evenly split among the 60-plus testifying, and 100-plus in attendance. The Planning Board will hold a draft hearing on Thursday, Feb. 13; they will subsequently make a recommendation to the County Council to retain or remove M-83, and the council will make the ultimate decision later this year.