Senate relaxes gift ban for sick employees

Alexis Lambert's request for reasonable changes to the gift ban didn't make the cut for 2020.

Changes are coming for the state’s gift ban, and a beloved veteran attorney’s struggle with cancer is the reason why.

Senate Budget Chief Rob Bradley’s SB 1490 will allow non-elected state employees to “accept any gift or compensation, regardless of value” if it is applied directly toward the expenses incurred from treating their or their child’s “serious disease or illness.”

The Senate unanimously passed the bill Thursday.

The argument is that catastrophic illness can put financial strain on an individual or a family. State employees typically lack the resources to deal with such.

Gifts and compensation directly linked to care or treatment of “serious disease or illness” would be permissible for rank and file employees, their spouses, or children.

Elected officials would be excluded.

The background involved a personal story of setback and comeback: Alexis Lambert, an attorney working for the Florida Lottery and previously for the Constitutional Revision Commission, got Stage 3 colon cancer.

Lambert offered unsparing testimony at previous committee stops, calling cancer a “rich man’s disease” and pointing out that the “average state employee cannot afford to get cancer.”

Lambert schlepped from meeting to meeting, describing a “blur” of doctor’s appointments, “six weeks of chemo radiation … surgery … and 12 weeks of maintenance chemo.”

A month of home health care: also non-optional.

“Losing my hair was the least of my problems,” Lambert said in one committee, harrowingly describing the shutdown of her reproductive system as part of cancer treatment.

The House bill (HB 1435), sponsored by Rep. Jayer Williamson, stalled in committees. The Senate version is in House messages, and this should be an easy vote for members.