This regulation needs to be amended to allow (indeed, require) the CIC Ombudsman to consider and interpret HOAs' declarations and other internal documents when rendering a determination on homeowner complaints and Notices of Adverse Decision.  All too often the Ombudsman refuses to make a determination about a complaint/NFAD because she insists that doing so would require her to interpret an HOA declaration, board resolutions, meeting minutes, etc.  But most of the provisions of the Virginia Property Owners' Act that she is tasked with enforcing incorporate or refer to those very internal documents!

So if the CIC Ombudsman can't or won't refer to those documents and make common-sense interpretations of them, the Ombudsman's authority is severely curtailed.  Perhaps that's the way that the HOA-Industrial Complex (represented by the Community Associations Institute and the HOA legal bar, etc.), but it's not fair to homeowners.