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Relating to the donation
of sick leave by state employees.
No significant fiscal implication to the State is
anticipated.
HB 1771 would add a new section to Chapter 661 of the
Government Code concerning the donation of sick leave for state employees.
Specifically, this legislation would allow a state employee to donate any
amount of his or her accrued sick leave to another employee.
An employee would be eligible to receive sick days from a
donor employee as long as both work in the same state agency and the receiving
employee has already exhausted all sick leave.
The donor employee would not be allowed to receive payment
or gift in exchange for the donation. Moreover, the employee receiving this
type of donation would not be permitted to receive paid sick leave nor receive
service credit in the Employees Retirement System of Texas.
The Senate committee did not make any changes to the House version of this bill.
Senate chamber sponsor: Kolkhorst
First chamber analysis:
State agency employees who become ill or must address family
emergencies are allotted a certain amount of sick days for such matters. However,
employees could easily exhaust those sick days depending on the severity of
their illness or family emergency. Unfortunately, these employees have little
recourse but to go back to work or risk losing their job because they have
missed too many days.
HB 1771 would allow state employees to donate their sick
days to fellow employees who have already exhausted the limits of their sick
days. Donor employees would not be limited
to the number of sick days they may donate. Likewise, employees receiving these
donations would not be limited to the number of sick days they may receive.
As mentioned before, this legislation does not restrict the
number of donated sick days an employee may receive because the author of the
bill wants to provide flexibility for state agencies to accommodate the unique situations
of each employee. Additionally, it is important to remember that if an employee
chooses to abuse the generosity of his or her coworkers by exploiting the
donated sick days, then that employee risks losing donations once others
discover he or she is taking advantage of employees. Fortunately, such a scenario
would be rare, but it shows that even without this law explicitly stating
otherwise, there is an inherit policing mechanism amongst the employees.
This bill allows employees to be charitable towards each
other while implementing necessary safeguards to protect against potential
abuse. For these reasons, we stand neutral
on SB 1771 since it does not affect our five liberty principles.