As Arizona’s SB1290 and HB4011 took effect September 12, 2026 — reforms meant to stop homeowners’ association boards from making decisions outside open, noticed meetings — BadHOA.com is publishing a documented case study showing how a board can accomplish much the same result without ever entering a closed session at all.
The case: McClellan Meadows Community Association, Pinal County
At an open Board meeting on August 13, 2026, the three-member board of the McClellan Meadows Community Association (Coolidge, Arizona; managed by AAM, LLC) — with only two of three directors present — voted, without dissent, to grant the Board President standing, ongoing, indefinite authority to act as the Association’s sole liaison and decision-maker with the Association’s attorney “on all legal matters,” with no requirement that any future exercise of that authority be logged, agendized, or reported back to the full Board.
A homeowner representative objected on the record before the vote, citing specific provisions of the Association’s own Bylaws that, in his reading, permit board action only by a vote of a quorum at a meeting or by unanimous written consent of every director — neither of which describes a permanent transfer of authority to one officer. The objection was met with a single question — “Are you an attorney?” — rather than any response to the citations. The resolution passed.
The full meeting recording and transcript, the underlying Bylaws citations, and the association’s written records-request responses are published at: https://mcclellanmeadows.com/board/read/aug-13-2026-sole-legal-authority
Why this is a statewide story, not a local dispute
BadHOA.com’s independent review of the meeting record found:
- The resolution was proposed and framed by the management company, not the Board. The community manager introduced, justified, and answered all questions about both resolutions passed that night; the directors’ role was limited to seconding and voting.
- A closely related delegation — letting the Board President and Treasurer approve any operating-budget line-item expenditure without a full-board vote — was introduced by the community manager as “a recommendation by the Association Attorneys for HOAs.” A homeowner has identified that firm as CHDB Law, one of Arizona’s largest HOA-focused law practices, whose lead litigation partner has held senior roles in the Community Associations Institute’s Arizona chapter, including prior co-chairmanship of its Legislative Action Committee — the same committee that formally opposed SB1290 during the 2026 legislative session. BadHOA.com has not located a published CHDB template matching this specific recommendation and is not asserting the firm authored it; the attribution above reflects the community manager’s own statement on the meeting recording, which BadHOA.com is publishing in full so readers can evaluate it directly.
- This is not the community’s first undocumented delegation of legal authority. The Association’s own management company has separately confirmed, in writing, that a 2023 legal position taken in the Association’s name was authorized only by “the Board President and Management” — not the full Board — and that no board motion or vote authorizing it can be located anywhere in the Association’s records. The August 13 resolution effectively formalizes, on a permanent and forward-looking basis, the same arrangement that produced that earlier, undocumented action.
- A recent Arizona Court of Appeals decision points the other direction. AZNH Revocable Trust v. Sunland Springs Village HOA (App. Apr. 28, 2026) struck down a board’s practice of concentrating decision-making authority in the board president and granting a community manager standing discretionary spending power, holding that such actions must occur by vote in an open, noticed meeting. The McClellan Meadows resolution — while itself adopted in an open meeting — removes future decisions from that open-meeting process entirely, going forward, for an entire category of Association business.
The pattern industry-wide
BadHOA.com’s research also found that CAI’s Arizona chapter formally opposed SB1290 during the 2026 session, running a call-to-action campaign urging members to lobby against it, and that HOA-industry opposition to open-meeting and transparency legislation is a well-documented pattern in other states as well. Whether or not any single firm distributed a specific template, the McClellan Meadows resolution is consistent with an industry posture that has repeatedly favored concentrated, “efficient” board decision-making over the kind of transparency the Legislature just mandated.
For scale: per Arizona Corporation Commission public filings, AAM is listed as statutory agent for 765 Arizona associations, covering roughly 153,465 homes — not a boutique manager, but the largest HOA management footprint in the state.
An open question BadHOA.com is tracking
BadHOA.com has also identified a discrepancy in the Association’s recorded governing documents that raises a separate, more fundamental question about their enforceability, and is continuing to verify county recording data before publishing further on that issue.
What BadHOA.com is asking for
- Confirmation from CHDB Law as to whether it recommended this resolution, to this Association or others, and if so, in what form;
- Identification of any other Arizona HOA that has adopted a similar standing delegation of legal or spending authority to a single officer in the weeks surrounding September 12, 2026;
- A response from McClellan Meadows’ Board as to whether it will reconsider the resolution in light of the Bylaws objection raised on the record before the vote.
Availability
BadHOA.com is available to provide the full documentary record — meeting recording and transcript, correspondence, and governing-document analysis — to reporters and legislators. This release reflects BadHOA.com’s independent review of publicly available records and is not a legal determination. Portions describing CHDB Law’s possible role are based on a homeowner’s identification of a verbal attribution made by a third party (the community manager) on a recording, not on any document authored by CHDB Law itself, and should be read accordingly.