Condo Media - July 2011 - 40

VOLUNTEER SPOTLIGHT

by Nena Groskind

Charles Perkins
Uncomfortable in the Spotlight, Perkins Prefers to Shine It on Others
he interview with Charles Perkins, the focus of this month’s CAI-NE volunteer spotlight, did not begin on a promising note, as he announced, “I don’t like to talk about myself.” However, he was happy to talk about what CAI-NE has done for him and (a little) about his involvement in the organization, which began nearly two decades ago. “Stephen Marcus (a partner in Marcus, Errico, Emmer & Brooks) was the link,” he recalls. Perkins had recently begun practicing condominium law, attracted to the field, he says, by the similarities he had discovered to his work as assistant town counsel in Chelmsford. In town government and in community associations, he found, “you’re dealing with the interpretation of bylaws, what you can and can’t do, the enforcement of covenants — both areas require pretty much the same skill set.” He met Marcus, who was the chapter president at the time, at an association event. The two became friends and then law partners for a time. The partnership turned out not to make much sense. “We were maintaining two fullyequipped, separate offices at opposite ends of the state,” Perkins explains. He eventually established Perkins & Anctil, in which he is a partner today. But the friendship with Marcus endured — as did Perkins’ involvement with CAI-NE. It didn’t require much arm-twisting to get him actively involved in the organization. Just beginning his condominium law practice at the time, Perkins says, he was “looking for a peer group” — other industry professionals with common interests confronting similar questions. He found that in spades at CAI-NE. “There isn’t another organization better-suited to provide of which he attributes to others “who did a lot more than I did” — as one of the highlights of his CAI-NE involvement. On a long list of CAI-NE assignments over the years, he also singles out his co-chairmanship of the association’s Attorneys’ Committee and his work on the Massachusetts Legislative Action Committee (LAC), on which he still serves. The Massachusetts LAC’s efforts have been focused, Perkins says, as much on “preventing bad legislation” that would be harmful to community associations as on supporting measures, like the super lien, that benefit them. Among the committee’s successes, he counts the reversal of a damaging change in state tax code and the defeat of measures: • Making it more difficult for associations to pursue construction defect claims. • Restricting the authority of condominium boards to adopt and enforce covenants and rules. • Mandating changes in the way associations are governed. Perkins cites bills requiring association boards to hold open meetings, proposed repeatedly but never enacted, as an example of legislation that could be harmful to community associations. “It’s never been about opposing transparency in association governance,” he says of the LAC’s opposition to these bills. “It’s been about how best to achieve transparency” without the unintended negative consequences these measures would produce. Of his work on the Attorneys’ Committee several years ago, Perkins

Long-standing CAI member and supporter Charles A. Perkins Jr., Esq.

answers to questions you couldn’t find anywhere else.” That was true 20 years ago, Perkins says, and he thinks it is just as true today.

A Super Lien Foot Soldier
He doesn’t remember the earliest association projects on which he worked, but he remembers vividly working as “a foot soldier” in the battle to win legislative approval of the state super lien law. Some of that work entailed going to the statehouse to lobby legislators, but much of it involved enlisting association managers, board members and condominium owners in a grass-roots campaign to persuade lawmakers that the priority lien was a matter of financial life and death for community associations. Perkins views the super lien initiative — the success

CONDO MEDIA • JULY 2011

Condo Media - July 2011

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