Molly Dunn sent seven letters to her condominium association and spent seven months in total trying to get the management company and association trustees to provide receipts for work done on her unit.

Fatemah Mojtabai described her situation as “even more extreme.” A Weston condo owner, Mojtabai has spent 13 months seeking receipts for $136,000 worth of improvements at her complex, money she said went to a contractor affiliated with the condominium management company.

First, Mojtabai said, she was told the receipts didn’t exist. Then she was told they were lost in a move. Before an annual meeting last Thursday, the receipts were “miraculously” found – but still haven’t been provided to her, Mojtabai told the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Housing Tuesday.

“This is not a military operation,” she said. “This is just a condo association. What is there so much to hide?”

Dunn and Mojtabai shared their stories with the committee to show support for a bill that would make condo associations responsible for attorney fees, if a condo owner files suit to obtain records the association is required to provide.

“It will give us teeth,” Dunn said. “I don’t feel like we should have to take the time to be here for this when, legally, it should be transparent to begin with.”

The bill (S 723), filed by Sen. Daniel Wolf, would update a law that went into place 52 years ago, said Meredith Keane, a Yarmouth condo owner who has been advocating for the changes.

Keane said the law requires condo associations to keep records and make them available to owners who request them, but provides no accountability if the board or managers do not comply. The only recourse owners have, she said, is to sue for records they’re requesting, hiring a condo attorney at fees that can top $300 hourly.

Condo owners might need to access certain records within a set timeframe to sell or refinance their units, Keane said.

“If you can’t get that in a timely basis, you’ve lost a deal, but you have to pay out-of-pocket to get a condo attorney,” she told the News Service. “Where are you going to get that kind of money?”

Matthew Gaines, chairman of the Massachusetts legislative action committee for the Community Associations Institute, said the trade group representing condominium, homeowners and other community associations prefers to see details of requirements left to individual associations because needs vary by size and location.

He described the proposed legislation as “a good bill” that “could be better slightly,” suggesting a provision that would spell out how much time an association would have to respond to a records request.

Gaines also recommended that whoever loses the lawsuit – either the owner or the association – should have to pay both sets of attorney fees, a measure he said would prevent frivolous lawsuits.

Noting that condo associations are required to keep certain records for up to seven years, Gaines recounted to the committee an instance in which one unit owner said he wanted to see the full seven years’ worth of all records and expected them in a matter of days.

“My concern is that if the association doesn’t comply with that because it’s physically impossible to do so, the unit owner does sue and then drags them to court,” he said. “Court is very unpredictable, and then all of a sudden the association has to pay that legal fee for that somewhat unreasonable request.”

However, Gaines said he had not seen a case where an owner sued their association over records.

“I think they just give up, which is too bad,” he said.