Yesterday, March 5, the House approved the amended Opportunity to Purchase Bill and it will now be on its way to the Governor for his signature. Special thanks go to all who worked so hard for this chance for us to buy our parks, especially John Van Landingham and Representatives Nancy Nathanson and Gene Whisnant, who refused to give up on the defeat we had suffered trying to pass a similar bill in the 2013 session. Thanks also to all of you who contacted your Senators urging and thanking them for supporting you.
A summary of the amendments follows as provided by John Van Landingham with his comments in italics:
The 4038 A8 amendments are agreed to by all
the interested parties. Note that LC has done a "gut and stuff" of
Sections 1 and 2 of the bill to implement these amendments, because of the many
small changes implementing the tenant-committee change discussed in #2 below:
1. Inclusion of LLC's in the exemptions from
the process (Section 4)
·
Add a new (e) to
the list of exemptions in Section 4 of the bill on page 4, lines
1-15: "Any sale or transfer of an interest in a limited
liability company to any of the limited liability company’s members."
·
Note: This
change is simply to exempt a transfer/sale within an LLC, from one LLC member
to another, as we already provide for with partnerships and corporations.\
2.
Establishment & identification of a single
tenants committee (Section 1 (4) and Section 2 (1)
·
Provide
that in order for the tenants to have an opportunity to compete to
purchase the park, during the first 10-day period after the owner’s notice of
interest in selling, the tenants must “form a tenants committee” if none
already exists, for the purpose of purchasing the park, and that there can be
only one (1) tenants committee eligible to participate in the process and
request financial information. This change is made in Section (1) (4) regarding
the owner’s notice to the tenants and in Section 2 (1) regarding the tenants’
duties during the initial 10-day period.
·
Note:
Practically speaking, that’s the way this would have to work anyway, in order
for tenants to be able to seek funding and engage in negotiations with an
owner. And our experience is that there are not more than one of these
efforts among the tenants anyway. Committees are not defined, and are informal
groups of people; a “tenant committee” could be two tenants who are interested
in exploring the possibility of purchasing the park. This change minimizes the
risk to owners of multiple contacts and requests from multiple tenants. The A8
amendments make other related changes to the bill to implement this second
change.
3.
Removal of the emergency clause. The
new effective date will be January 1, 2015. (Section 20)
House
Senate