Open meeting laws generally require that most board meetings be open for homeowners to attend and observe, not just receive minutes after the fact. This includes routine business meetings where budgets, vendor decisions, and rule enforcement typically get discussed — the kind of decisions homeowners have a real interest in watching unfold, not just being told about afterward.
Most states allow a board to close part of a meeting to homeowners for a narrow set of sensitive topics, typically including:
Executive session is meant to be the narrow exception, not a workaround for avoiding scrutiny on routine decisions — boards that close too much of their business to executive session risk violating the law's actual intent even if each individual topic seems defensible on its own.
Open meeting requirements are usually one piece of a broader sunshine law framework that also covers records access — together, they're meant to ensure homeowners can see both how decisions get made and the paper trail behind them. A board following open meeting rules but stonewalling records requests (or vice versa) is still likely falling short of what sunshine laws require overall.
