Committee drops arbitrary date in Planned Communities Act to ease political-sign confusion

The Senate State and Local Government Committee on Monday voted 10-0 to advance House Bill 27, which removes an arbitrary 2023 effective date from the Planned Communities Act and aims to eliminate confusion about political signage in housing developments.

Speaker Osborne, the bill sponsor, told the committee that the Act had included a date that inadvertently left developments in different phases subject to different sign rules. He said the inconsistency produced situations during the last election in which neighbors in the same street — and in one example, next-door properties governed by different phases — had differing rights to display yard signs.

"This all this does is it removes that arbitrary [date] still allows the HOAs, the community associations to put restrictions on how large, how long they can stay up, where they can put them," Osborne said, adding the change preserves HOA authority over size, placement and duration restrictions.

Senator Rawlings said he filed a companion bill in the Senate and indicated past presentations had shown foreign donations can affect ballot measure campaigns nationally; Rawlings' comment referenced a separate discussion later in the hearing about foreign funding and is not a change to this measure. No committee debate opposing the bill was recorded; the chair said the measure would likely receive similar consideration on the floor.

The committee adopted the substitute and moved the bill forward without recorded opposition.