Can HOA waste our money with sheer incompetence?

Details of complaint: We were informed several months ago that our HOA rates would be going up (again) by $45/month, due to our master insurance policy going up by 50%. We were advised to check with our insurance agent, regarding simply self-insuring our entire structures ourselves. Currently there is a huge master policy insuring all of the external structures, and we each have individual policies insuring the inside. It’s the huge external master policy that is going up by 50%. So I contacted my agent and it would save a HUGE AMOUNT of money for us to simply insure the entire structures ourselves, and it would be better coverage! So I contacted the HOA to opt out of the master plan but of course they won’t let us do that. Instead they’re raising our rates for a FULL YEAR, because they claim it will take a FULL YEAR to change the by-laws so that we can self-insure. This is absolutely ridiculous!!! It should take a couple of hours in a lawyer’s office to accomplish this goal!