The HOA Fining Committee: Who Sits On It, What It Decides, and How the Hearing Must Run

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Published September 25, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: HOAs

Florida law does not let an HOA board fine an owner by itself. Section 720.305(2) requires a separate committee of at least three people, none of them an officer, director or employee of the association and none of them closely related to one, to hold a hearing and decide whether the fine the board levied will actually be imposed. The committee does not create the fine, raise it, or lower it. It confirms it or it rejects it.

What the fining committee is, and what it is not

Section 720.305(2)(b) is the source of the committee. A fine or suspension levied by the board of administration may not be imposed unless the board first provides at least 14 days' written notice of the parcel owner's right to a hearing, and the hearing is held before a committee of at least three members appointed by the board. Read that sequence. The board levies; the committee then decides whether what the board levied gets imposed.

The committee is not a court and it is not a mediator. Section 720.305(2)(c) states the point: the role of the committee is limited to determining whether to confirm or reject the fine or suspension levied by the board. It cannot substitute a $50 fine for the $100 the board levied, add a suspension the board never proposed, or strike a deal in the hallway. If a majority does not approve, the fine or suspension may not be imposed.

It is not optional either. There is no version of the subsection (2) process that skips the committee, and fines issued by board vote alone are exposed, along with any lien built on them. The committee is not needed for the two delinquency suspensions: sections 720.305(3) and (4) both say the notice and hearing requirements of subsection (2) do not apply, though section 720.305(5) still requires board approval at a properly noticed meeting. Our guide to fines, hearings and suspensions walks the full enforcement sequence. This page stays on the committee.

Who may serve, and who may not

Section 720.305(2)(b) disqualifies two groups from the committee:

• Officers, directors and employees of the association. That is every sitting board member and anyone the association itself employs.
• The spouse, parent, child, brother or sister of an officer, director or employee.

The statute stops there. It does not disqualify in-laws, grandchildren, domestic partners, former directors, or an owner who dislikes the person being fined, and it does not require committee members to be parcel owners or residents.

The word "employees" needs thought. A manager working for an outside management company under contract is generally not an employee of the association. An on-site manager on the association's own payroll generally is. Confirm that against your management agreement, because the agreement is where the relationship is actually defined.

The statutes do not settle the question. Chapter 720 does not define "employee," and § 468.431, which defines community association management, the management firm and the community association manager, is written without regard to who employs the manager. Two provisions of Chapter 720 do treat the categories as distinct, and they support reading the disqualification narrowly. Section 720.303(5)(g)4. shields from member inspection the personnel records of "association or management company employees," using the disjunctive and then repeating it. Section 720.3055(2)(a)1. exempts from competitive bidding both contracts with employees of the association and contracts for community association manager services, listing them as separate items in the same series. Neither provision decides it, and the point is unsettled.

The best practice does not depend on resolving it. Keep the manager off the committee, in-house or contracted. The manager is usually the person who documented the violation, sent the notice and will administer whatever the committee decides, and a seat at the table turns an argument about the violation into an argument about the committee. Let the manager notice the hearing and keep the record, and appoint three people nobody can characterize as an employee of anyone.

Appoint the committee in advance, by board action, and record it in the minutes. Three names chosen at the start of the year are far easier to defend than three produced the week of a hearing. How an HOA board creates and empowers a committee is covered in our page on committee authority under Chapter 720.

The notice the board must send

Section 720.305(2)(b) sets both the timing and the contents. The notice must give at least 14 days' written notice of the parcel owner's right to a hearing. It goes to the owner at the designated mailing or e-mail address in the association's official records, and, if applicable, to any occupant, licensee or invitee who is the one sought to be fined or suspended. It must include:

1. A description of the alleged violation.
2. The specific action required to cure the violation, if a cure applies.
3. The hearing date and location, and the access information if the hearing will be held by telephone or other electronic means.

The cure language is what boards most often leave out, and leaving it out is costly. Under section 720.305(2)(e), a violation cured before the hearing or in the manner the written notice specified bars any fine or suspension, and a notice that never told the owner how to cure makes it harder to argue the owner failed to.

The hearing must also be held within 90 days after issuance of the notice. One that slips past 90 days because the committee could not gather, or because season ended, is a hearing the statute did not authorize.

How the hearing runs

The committee may hold the hearing by telephone or other electronic means, and the parcel owner has the right to attend by telephone or other electronic means. Even a committee that prefers to meet in the clubhouse has to be able to put an absent owner on the line, and the notice must carry the access information. In a seasonal community that is the difference between a hearing in March and one that waits until November.

Beyond that the statute is thin. It does not say who presents the association's case, whether witnesses testify, or what the burden of proof is. That silence is not an invitation to improvise at the table. Adopt a short written hearing procedure and follow it whether the owner appears or not. Consistency is what makes the record defensible and is the best protection against a selective enforcement claim, a subject taken up in our covenant enforcement guide. Within 7 days after the hearing, the committee must deliver written findings.

What happens after the committee votes

1. The committee rejects it. Under section 720.305(2)(c), a majority vote that does not approve means the proposed fine or suspension may not be imposed. The board does not get a second hearing on the same proposal.
2. The violation was cured. Under section 720.305(2)(e), a cure before the hearing or in the manner the written notice specified bars any fine or suspension.
3. The committee approves. Under section 720.305(2)(d) it must give written notice of its findings within 7 days, stating what was approved or rejected and how to cure or fulfill a suspension, and under section 720.305(2)(f) it must set a payment date at least 30 days after delivery of that notice.

Attorney's fees run on a later clock than most boards assume. Section 720.305(2)(f) says fees may not be awarded against the owner based on actions the board took before the date set for payment, and section 720.305(2)(g) says they may not begin to accrue until after that noticed payment date and after the time for an appeal has expired. The work done building the case is not recoverable. In any action to recover a fine, section 720.305(2) also gives the prevailing party its fees, which is why a procedurally weak fine is worth abandoning rather than suing on.

The dollar limits, and when your documents may raise them

Section 720.305(2) sets two numbers. A fine may not exceed $100 per violation, and a fine levied for each day of a continuing violation may not exceed $1,000 in the aggregate. Both carry the same qualifier: unless otherwise provided in the governing documents.

That qualifier is not self-executing. Your declaration or bylaws must actually set a higher amount, and many older Southwest Florida declarations say nothing about fines at all, in which case the statutory figures are your ceiling. A board rule will not do it.

A continuing violation may be fined daily on a single notice and a single hearing. You do not send a new 14-day notice for each day; what you need is a record showing the violation continued, day by day, from the date the notice specified. Note the last sentence of the fine provision: a fine of less than $1,000 may not become a lien against a parcel.

Suspensions, and the two things you may never fine for

Section 720.305(2)(a) lets the association suspend, for a reasonable period, the right of a member or a member's tenant, guest or invitee to use common areas and facilities. That suspension runs through the same 14-day notice and committee hearing as a fine. Two limits attach to it. They attach to the 90-day delinquency suspension in section 720.305(3) as well, in identical words. They do not attach to the voting-rights suspension in section 720.305(4), which carries neither of them:

• The suspension power does not reach the portion of the common areas used to provide access or utility services to the parcel. Note the mechanism. Section 720.305(2)(a) says that paragraph "does not apply to that portion of common areas used to provide access or utility services to the parcel," and section 720.305(3) says the same of itself. It is a limit on what the suspension power covers rather than a prohibition on denying utility service. The practical result is close to the same, and the statutory language is still the one to quote when an owner's lawyer is reading over your shoulder.
• A suspension "may not prohibit an owner or tenant of a parcel from having vehicular and pedestrian ingress to and egress from the parcel, including, but not limited to, the right to park." That half is phrased as a prohibition, and it appears in both section 720.305(2)(a) and section 720.305(3).

The delinquency suspensions work differently. Section 720.305(3) allows suspension of common area and facility use when a member is more than 90 days delinquent in any fee, fine or other monetary obligation, with no subsection (2) hearing. Section 720.305(4) allows suspension of voting rights on the same trigger, and a suspended voting interest is subtracted from the total, so it is not counted for quorum, for conducting an election, or for any approval percentage. The suspension ends on full payment of all obligations currently due or overdue. Section 720.305(4) contains neither of the two limits above, which is coherent enough: a voting-rights suspension cannot interfere with utility service or with getting to the house.

Section 720.305(7) then takes two categories off the table entirely, notwithstanding anything in the governing documents. An association may not fine or suspend for garbage receptacles left at the curb within 24 hours before or after the designated collection day or time, or for holiday decorations left up longer than the documents allow, unless they stay up more than one week after the association gives written notice. Note the shape of the second one: the clock starts with the notice, not the violation.

Minutes, records and the file you will need later

Section 720.303(3) requires minutes of all meetings of the members and of the board, with each director's vote or abstention recorded. By its terms it does not require committee minutes, and the official records list in section 720.303(4), kept at least 7 years, names minutes of board and member meetings without naming committee minutes.

Keep them anyway. The committee's decision is the hinge of the enforcement action, and the association will be asked to prove it two years later. Our page on writing association minutes covers the general standard. For a fining hearing the file should hold:

• Board minutes showing the board levied the fine or suspension, with the vote recorded.
• The dated 14-day notice, its contents, and proof of how and where it was sent.
• The committee appointment, showing the members and their qualification.
• Who attended and how, the committee vote, and the written findings delivered within 7 days.

The procedural failures that cost associations fines

Most fines that fail in Southwest Florida fail on procedure rather than on the merits of the violation. In rough order of frequency:

1. A committee member who is a director, an employee, or the spouse, parent, child, brother or sister of one.
2. No board action levying the fine first, so there was nothing for the committee to confirm.
3. A notice that describes the violation but never states the specific action required to cure it.
4. A hearing held more than 90 days after the notice issued, or written findings delivered later than 7 days after it.
5. A payment date less than 30 days after delivery of those findings, or fees charged for work done before that date.
6. Treating a fine under $1,000 as a lien, or including it in a claim of lien for assessments.
7. Fines above the statutory ceilings with no authorizing language in the declaration or bylaws.
8. A committee that negotiates or substitutes a different penalty instead of voting yes or no.

All of these are easier to avoid than to fix. Where fines have gone out under a flawed process, the usual move is to stop, correct the procedure, and re-notice going forward rather than defend the old ones. Where the authority to fine comes from is covered in our overview of Chapter 720 and how it governs your association.

For community association managers: see An owner is violating the rules: how does a manager get from complaint to a lawful fine? in the Manager Resource Center.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes helps HOA boards and managers in Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties build a fining process that holds up: qualified committees, notices that satisfy section 720.305(2), and hearing records that survive a challenge. We also review fines already imposed before the association spends money collecting them. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Covenant Enforcement page.