Legislation May 16, 2026

Ten reform bills. Zero enacted. Where each one died.

Reform is not absent because nobody tried. Reform is absent because every attempt died at the committee level — usually without a recorded vote. The mechanism is consistent: bill enters committee, sits for a session, fails to advance. No floor vote, no record, no accountability.

We catalog every NY State and NYC Council bill from the past decade that would have fixed a documented condo or co-op governance gap on our legislative graveyard page. Ten bills. Combined: thirty legislative sessions of attempted reform. One bill currently pending (NYC Council Intro 1120-B, in committee). Nine dead. The combined enacted count is zero.

The pattern, not the bill.

What matters here is the pattern, not any single bill. Reform proposals around condo and co-op governance follow a near-identical legislative life cycle in Albany: a sponsor introduces the bill, the bill is referred to committee, the committee chair declines to schedule a vote, the bill dies at the end of the session, and either the same sponsor reintroduces it next session or the bill quietly disappears. The pattern repeats across multiple sponsors and multiple sessions for the same handful of substantive proposals.

This is not how Albany handles every issue. Bills that pass the Housing Committee do exist. Every session of the legislature enacts dozens of housing-related bills. The pattern that defines the condo/co-op governance space is selective: bills affecting tenant protections move; bills affecting condo/co-op governance do not. The most charitable read is "low constituent priority." The less charitable read is "industry-aligned committee chairs."

Five bills worth knowing about.

A.3793 — Managing Agent Licensure Act. Linda Rosenthal's licensure bill. Reintroduced across six sessions since 2017. Died in Housing Committee every time. Industry opposition from REBNY. The Senate companion advanced past first reading in none of those sessions. This is the bill the new S.71 / A.4954 effectively replaces, with even lighter touch.

A.7088 — Cooperative & Condominium Bill of Rights. Edward Braunstein. Would have mandated disclosure of board minutes, financials, and reserve fund status; right to inspect records; right to copies of governing documents at closing. Reintroduced four sessions. Died in Judiciary every time. Framed by opponents as a "litigation invitation," the standard rhetoric used to kill any disclosure mandate.

S.2845 — Reserve Fund Floor Act. Brad Hoylman. Would have set a statutory reserve-fund floor as a percentage of operating budget, indexed to building age and LL11 cycle status. Two sessions. Replaced in subsequent narrative by AG-driven "best practices" guidance with no enforcement mechanism. A familiar substitution.

A.5391 — Engineer Conflict-of-Interest Disclosure (LL11). Karines Reyes. Would have barred the LL11 inspecting engineer from receiving fees, referrals, or kickbacks from the contractor performing the remediation they specified. Two sessions. Engineer trade association and AIA-NY opposition. This is the bill that most directly addresses the LL11 cost-opacity pattern documented across our building catalog.

A.5026 — Special Assessment Owner Vote Act. Harvey Epstein. Required unit-owner supermajority vote for special assessments exceeding 10% of annual common charges or $5,000 per unit. Three sessions. Board / managing-agent lobby blocked it. No senate companion in the 2024 cycle. The closest thing in current Albany activity is buried inside the broader Cooperative & Condominium Bill of Rights work.

The one that's live right now.

NYC Council Intro 1120-B by Council Member Pierina Sanchez establishes city-level co-op transparency requirements: mandatory timelines for co-op application review and structured disclosure of board decisions. It passed City Council in 2024 and takes effect 2026-07-28. It does not directly address managing-agent licensure (which is a state-level issue) but it establishes the precedent that municipal-level condo/co-op governance regulation is possible in NYC. If S.71 stalls in Albany, a city-level managing-agent license is the next logical move, and Sanchez has positioned herself as the credible carrier.

Why this matters in 2026.

The reason to publish this list is not to shame the legislators who carried these bills. Most of the sponsors deserve credit. They introduced reforms their constituents needed and did so against organized opposition. The reason to publish the list is to make the cumulative weight visible. When a journalist asks "what's the state of condo reform in NY?" the honest answer is: a decade of bills, zero enacted, almost none with a recorded floor vote. That is the structural fact any reform conversation has to start from.

It also matters as targeting data. If you want to write a letter, the bills that most reward constituent contact in 2026 are S.71 / A.4954 (the live licensure bill in Albany) and any subsequent reintroduction of Hoylman's reserve-fund or Epstein's special-assessment work. The letter-to-rep generator has templates for each of these.

What we're missing.

This list is incomplete by design. We track bills that reached at least committee assignment in Albany or the NYC Council. We don't track draft legislation that never got sponsored, advocacy proposals never converted to bill text, or memo letters that never received an answer. The graveyard is bigger than what's visible here. If you have firsthand knowledge of a reform bill not listed (especially one killed in committee in the last three sessions), let us know via the corrections page. We add primary-source citations and update.