Florida Law · Records Compliance · Member Education

Florida Records Requests Through the Pecchia Lens — A Plain-Language Member Explainer

By the CIC-SC Editorial Team Updated May 23, 2026 Reading time: ~12 minutes Audience: Florida Boards, Officers, Managers

Educational notice. This information is educational in nature and should not be construed as legal advice. Consult qualified association counsel regarding legal interpretation specific to your jurisdiction.

If you serve on the board of a Florida homeowners’ association, or you manage one, the records-request statute is one of the operational tests you will see — repeatedly, across years of service. A member submits a written request. The clock starts. The association either produces the records cleanly inside the statutory window, or it does not. Florida courts have generally been clear that the procedural skeleton matters, and the Fifth District’s 2024 decision in Pecchia v. Wayside Estates Homeowners Association is the recent appellate articulation of that point.

This article walks plain-language through what the case says, what the court emphasized, and a 30-minute records-readiness self-assessment a Florida board can run before the next request lands. It is a companion piece to the CICSC governance standard GOV-010 (Florida Records Request Response) and the Records Request Response Template that pairs with it.

This is descriptive of court findings only. It is not legal advice, it is not a prediction of how any other dispute would resolve, and it is not a characterization of any party beyond what appears in the court’s findings of record. For application of records-request obligations to a specific association, Florida boards consult association counsel.

The Case in One Sentence

Pecchia v. Wayside Estates Homeowners Association, No. 5D23-0963 (Fla. 5th DCA June 7, 2024), is the recent Fifth District appellate articulation of the principle that Florida’s records-access statute for homeowners’ associations — Fla. Stat. § 720.303(5) — requires strict compliance and that technical or administrative obstacles do not excuse non-compliance with the statutory response window or production obligations.

What the Court Emphasized

The court’s findings, as published, generally emphasized three points relevant to Florida boards and managers:

The statutory right of inspection is meaningful. Florida statute generally treats the right of members to inspect official records as a substantive right, not a procedural courtesy. An association’s obligation to respond is owed to the requesting member, and the framework is the statute, not the association’s preference.

Strict compliance with the procedural requirements is required. The court emphasized that the procedural elements of the records-access statute — the response window, the production obligations, the framework for handling records inside the statute — must be honored as written. The takeaway, in plain language, is that the procedural skeleton is not a soft target.

Technical or administrative obstacles do not excuse non-compliance. The court’s findings indicated that internal-routing delays, ad-hoc workflow problems, or other administrative obstacles do not extend the statutory window or excuse the production obligation. The statute runs on its own clock, regardless of where the request sits inside the association.

The descriptive takeaway for any Florida board reading the case: the procedural elements are the elements, and the response window is the response window. The court’s findings should not be read as predictive of how any other dispute would resolve — Florida appellate decisions turn on the specific record on appeal, and Pecchia is descriptive of one association’s record. But the procedural posture the court emphasized is the same procedural posture the records-request statute already generally requires.

What This Cost the Association

The court’s published findings establish that the association did not satisfy the statutory framework on the record before the court. Florida statute generally provides — under § 720.303(5) and related provisions — that an association’s failure to comply with the records-access requirements can carry consequences including liability under the records-access provisions of Chapter 720. The specific damages or remedies in any particular case turn on the controlling statute and the court’s application to the record.

Beyond the litigation outcome itself, Florida boards reading the case typically note the broader operational implications. A contested records-request dispute generally consumes counsel time, board time, and management time across a span of months — and the association is typically the party paying for all three. The procedural discipline GOV-010 lays out exists in part because the cost of not having it shows up well before any court reaches a ruling.

The Procedural Skeleton, in Plain Language

Florida statute generally requires that, when an HOA receives a written records request, the association make official records available for inspection or copying within ten business days of receipt under § 720.303(5). The parallel framework for Florida condominium associations under § 718.111(12) generally requires response within ten working days from receipt.

Inside that window, the procedural skeleton a well-run association generally follows is straightforward: log the request on intake (the window runs from receipt, not from internal forwarding); acknowledge in writing; identify responsive records and flag items potentially requiring redaction or refusal; coordinate with counsel on uncertain items before the window closes; produce by the response-due date with the production method identified; document any redaction or refusal in writing with a stated basis; and retain the file under the association’s retention schedule. GOV-010 and the Records Request Response Template lay out the framework in operational detail.

A 30-Minute Records-Readiness Self-Assessment

The following self-assessment is a board-level procedural review a board chair, Secretary, or designated governance officer can run in roughly thirty minutes. The questions are general; the answers are association-specific. A “no” or “uncertain” on any item is a flag that the board’s records-request response posture has a gap worth addressing before the next request arrives — not a determination of compliance, which is a legal question for counsel.

Is there a written records-request procedure? A board-approved, written procedure identifying who receives requests, who logs them, who responds, what the response window is, and how production happens. If the procedure is in someone’s head, the association is improvising.
Is there a single, named records custodian? One named role — the Secretary, the manager, a board officer with a defined records portfolio — operationally responsible for the response. Diffusion of responsibility is one of the most common reasons response windows are missed.
Is the request log current and discoverable? If a written request arrived today, would date-of-receipt be logged, would the response-due date be calculated and entered, and would the file be findable a year from now?
Are responsive records actually findable inside the window? Could the association produce the most recent annual budget, the last twelve months of meeting minutes, active vendor contracts, the certificate of insurance, and the SIRS (where applicable) inside the statutory response window without ad-hoc reconstruction?
Are the categories excluded from inspection identified in advance? A current, counsel-reviewed list of categories Florida statute generally excludes — attorney-client communications, personnel records, certain medical records, statutorily-excluded personal identifiers, third-party privacy items.
Is the production-method framework defined? A default approach for each production method — physical inspection, copy delivery, portal production — rather than deciding fresh each time.
Are redactions and refusals routed through counsel? A defined path to get counsel input on potential redaction or refusal items before the window closes.
Is the response itself retained under the retention schedule? The request, response, production record, and counsel notes themselves become records the association generally retains.

A board that can answer “yes” to all eight is operating in the procedural posture GOV-010 lays out. A board with “no” or “uncertain” answers has a board-level governance agenda — typically a single meeting agenda item that closes the gaps before the next request lands.

When to Consult Counsel

Florida boards typically bring the following records-request questions to association counsel:

Whether a particular record category is “official records” subject to inspection under the applicable statute;
Whether a particular response item is subject to redaction under a recognized statutory or governing-document basis;
Whether a particular request item is properly refused on a stated basis, and how to articulate that basis in writing;
Whether a particular request — overbroad, abusive, or implicating excluded categories — triggers a different procedural posture than a routine request;
Any item the board is uncertain about, while the response window is still open.

The point of the procedural discipline this article describes is to give counsel a clean record to work from when consultation is warranted — not to substitute for counsel. CICSC content is the framework; counsel is the application.

The Credentialing Connection

The procedural skeleton described in this article — intake logging, acknowledgment, response-window calculation, production-method identification, redaction and refusal documentation, retention — is the kind of governance discipline a structured credential is built to develop. A board member who has worked through a credential covering records access, meeting procedure, fiduciary duty, financial oversight, and the procedural elements that anchor the records-request response framework is generally better positioned to honor the framework when a request actually arrives.

The CICSC CIC-BOS Foundations credential is structured around the curriculum content typically associated with Florida board-member governance education, including records-access procedure. It is free during the Founders’ Cohort, which closes July 31, 2026. CICSC issues the CIC-BOS credential as a governance credential; it is not a state-conferred designation, and CICSC does not represent that any particular educational program satisfies any specific statutory requirement for any particular association or director. That determination is made by each association in consultation with its counsel.

Enrollment information is available at cic-sc.org.

Companion Resources

Standard: GOV-010 — Florida Records Request Response Standard
Template: Records Request Response Template — illustrative components for each procedural element
Standard: GOV-006 — Florida HOA Governance
Standard: GOV-007 — Florida Condominium Governance
Case Article: Pecchia v. Wayside Estates Homeowners Association — fl-pecchia-v-wayside-estates-2024.md
Article: Florida’s Online Records Portal Rules — fl-online-records-portal-compliance.md
FAQ: Florida HOA Board Member FAQ Library
FAQ: Florida Condominium Board Member FAQ Library
Credential: CIC-BOS Foundations (Founders’ Cohort — free through July 31, 2026)

Tags: Pecchia v. Wayside Estates · Florida records request · § 720.303(5) · § 718.111(12) · ten business days · records custodian · records-readiness self-assessment · GOV-010 · Florida 5th DCA · strict compliance

Disclaimer. This article is published by the Common Interest Community Standards Council for educational and informational purposes only. It is not legal advice and does not establish an attorney-client relationship. Statutory and case references are intended to support informed governance, not to substitute for advice from qualified Florida legal counsel. The application of Fla. Stat. § 720.303(5), § 718.111(12), and the procedural posture emphasized in Pecchia v. Wayside Estates Homeowners Association to a specific association depends on the particular facts and the current state of Florida law. Boards should consult their association’s attorney on records-request response, redaction or refusal determinations, and any contested request. CIC-SC, its authors, and its members assume no liability for actions taken in reliance on this content.