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Consumer Affairs seeks two complaint analysts as homeowner-association and overall complaints rise
Summary
CARRIE GRUBE LYBARGER, administrator and consumer advocate for the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs, told the Senate Finance subcommittee the department seeks two additional complaint analysts after large increases in overall and homeowner-association complaints.
CARRIE GRUBE LYBARGER, administrator and consumer advocate for the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs, told the Senate Finance Committee subcommittee that the department seeks two additional consumer-complaint analysts to handle growing workloads, particularly homeowner-association (HOA) disputes.
Lybarger said the department is celebrating its 50th anniversary and has updated outreach materials to address emerging scams; she presented the subcommittee with a packet of materials. "Business is booming at the department," she said, and the agency has seen a substantial rise in filings and complaints.
Lybarger told senators the department processed more than 225,000 complaints historically and more than 512,000 regulatory filings, and that filings increased about 8 percent recently. She said the department recovered roughly $915,000 this fiscal year through voluntary mediation and nonjudicial enforcement and has delivered dozens of outreach presentations statewide.
On complaints, Lybarger said the department has seen a 79 percent increase in total complaints comparing fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2024, and homeowner-association complaints specifically grew about 91 percent over the same frame after the agency received statutory authority to accept HOA complaints in May 2018. She described HOA cases as more complex because of supplemental questionnaires, additional data entry and a reporting requirement under the law.
Lybarger said the department currently has three complaint analysts. "The ideal number of open complaints for an analyst is 70 to 80," she said, but analysts are carrying between 100 and 120 open complaints at any given time. The department requests two additional analysts to reduce caseloads and improve processing times. Lybarger said the agency’s online filing system processes 99 percent of complete applications within 30 days.
Senators asked about geographic patterns in HOA complaints. Lybarger said coastal counties such as Horry, Georgetown and Jasper appear frequently in raw counts; per-capita maps in the department’s report show higher rates in some smaller counties. She also described the department’s referral patterns for insurance-related complaints, noting the Department of Insurance is a frequent referral partner.
Lybarger referenced House Bill H3350 as containing some of the department’s recommendations for HOA reform and said the agency had previously provided lawmakers a seven-year data compilation and an HOA report released January 31. She said the agency would provide the committee a grouped list of the most frequent HOA complaint types and suggested remedies identified through consumer reports.
The subcommittee did not vote on the request during the hearing. Lybarger also asked that the subcommittee support a fiscal-year increase for other-funds cost-of-living adjustments and requested that four long-standing provisos be codified.
