Companion bills designed to crack down on gift card fraud in Florida are close to passing. Both await floor votes.

Members of the House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to advance HB 1007, which would codify language and punishments specific to gift card fraud in Florida Statutes.

Senate lawmakers did the same for the bill’s upper-chamber analog (SB 1198) Tuesday.

The House bill’s sponsor, St. Augustine Republican Rep. Sam Greco, a lawyer, said the crime his legislation aims to address “has victimized many Floridians in recent years.”

“These schemes have resulted in meaningful financial losses for both consumers and businesses, while our law enforcement and State Attorneys lack the necessary tools to combat this misconduct effectively,” he said.

“The bill aims to protect Floridians from exploitation and give our police and prosecutors the tools they need to hold bad actors accountable.”

SB 1198 and HB 1007 differ slightly in language, but their effects are essentially the same. If passed, the legislation would:

— Establish clear definitions for gift cards and terms related to their use and misuse.

— Make committing gift card fraud a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and $1,000 in fines.

— Increase the penalty to a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines, if the value of ill-gotten money, goods or services exceeds $750.

Representatives from the International Council of Shopping Centers, Florida Chamber of Commerce, Florida Retail Federation, Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, Associated Industries of Florida, Florida Smart Justice Alliance, AARP and Interactive Communications International support the legislation.

In 2023 alone, gift card-related fraud accounted for $217 million of the record $10 billion lost in scams across the U.S., according to Federal Trade Commission data.

In Florida, there have been many news reports about gift card fraudsters getting caught.

Democratic Rep. Dan Daley, a Broward County prosecutor, said the state’s existing petit theft laws aren’t sufficient in tamping down on gift card fraud.

“This is not a person that’s going in and just taking a gift card or two off the shelf,” he said.

“This is a complicated scheme where they’re going in, taking as many as they can, taking them home, stripping them out of the packaging, taking down the information, repackaging it, putting it back in the store, somebody’s unexpectedly buying them and giving them to a loved one — a family member, whatever — as a gift, and when there’s money loaded onto the card (the criminal takes) the money. … So, very complicated, very complex.”

St. Petersburg Sen. Nick DiCeglie is carrying SB 1198.

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Florida lawmakers are closer than they’ve ever been to helping a man who suffered life-altering injuries in a devastating crash nearly two decades ago.

Members of the House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously for HB 6507, which would authorize Pasco County Schools to pay $1 million to Marcus Button and $200,000 to his mother, Robin Button, for pain, suffering, costs and lost wages due to a 2006 collision with a school bus.

The bill is now heading to the House floor. So far, it hasn’t received a single “no” vote in the chamber.

Meanwhile, the bill’s Senate twin (SB 8) has cleared two of three committee stops. That’s further than any prior version of the measure has gotten since former Sen. Mike Fasano filed the original legislation in 2010.

HB 6507 and SB 8 are claims bills, a special classification of legislation intended to compensate a person or entity for injury or loss due to the negligence or error of a public officer or agency.

Claims bills arise when appropriate damages exceed what is allowable under Florida’s sovereign immunity law, which protects government agencies from costly lawsuits by capping payouts — today — at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident. For payments beyond those sums, legislative action is necessary.

Marcus Button was 16 on Sept. 22, 2006, when his friend was driving him to their high school. A school bus driver pulled out in front of Jessica Juettner’s car on State Road 54. It was later determined that bus driver John E. Kinne, whose only other passenger was a backup driver, failed to yield the right-of-way.

The car struck the bus between its wheels, slipping under the larger vehicle. Button, who was riding in the front seat and allegedly not wearing a seatbelt, struck the windshield headfirst, sustaining facial and skull fractures, brain damage and vision loss.

Button had to relearn to walk, still suffers from pain, is mostly blind in his right eye and has no sense of smell, among other chronic issues. He also now speaks with a British accent due to foreign accent syndrome, a speech disorder associated with traumatic brain injury. He also endures visual and auditory hallucinations that contribute to chronic paranoia.

Button’s parents sued the Pasco County School Board in 2007 and ultimately won a $1.38 million settlement for Button and $289,000 for themselves. But Button and his mother have seen just $163,000 due to Florida’s statutory limits.

For the past two years, Tallahassee Sen. Corey Simon and Pensacola Rep. Alex Andrade, both Republicans, have been sponsoring Button’s claims bill. They were the first to take up the cause since 2020, when former Senate Democratic Leader Audrey Gibson filed a comparable measure with no House companion.

It died without a hearing, as did prior efforts by former Republican Sen. Miguel Díaz de la Portilla in 2012 and 2013, and former Republican Sen. Denise Grimsley in 2014, 2015 and 2017.

The Pasco County School Board supports Simon and Andrade’s legislation.

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Legislation to ask voters next year whether they want to amend the Florida Constitution and set eight-year term limits for all County Commissioners and School Board members survived its second House stop, but not without taking some dings.

By the time members of the House Education Administration Subcommittee voted on the measure (HJR 679), more than three dozen people had spoken against it or signaled opposition, including several members of the panel.

The bill’s sponsor, Escambia County Republican Rep. Michelle Salzman, was visibly frustrated and said as much during her closing statements. Last year, she said, she sponsored a similar proposal that would have made the change through legislative approval, but people urged her to instead put the issue on the ballot.

“I brought it back and I’m putting it on the ballot, and now that’s not enough,” she said. “Now that’s not the right way.”

Lawmakers established 12-year term limits for School Board members in 2022. But by the following year, Spring Hills Republican Sen. Blaise Ingoglia — who is now carrying a Senate twin (SJR 802) to Salzman’s bill — began pushing for a more restrictive eight-year limit that also applied to County Commissioners.

Gov. Ron DeSantis supported the change, though it’s proven unsuccessful so far.

Salzman said an overwhelming share of voters want term limits at all levels of government and that without them, incumbents often amass power that can prove prohibitive to smart, well-intentioned people hoping to unseat them.

“Public service is not a career. We’re not supposed to be here serving the people for 20 years. We’re supposed to come here fresh and ready to serve, energized and ready to work for the people,” she said. “And it’s certainly not easy for people with fresh minds and ideas to have an opportunity to serve their community as a public servant if you have the inability to get somebody to move out of office.”

Salzman added that she plans to file an amendment to allow for County Commission and School Board members to serve again after they’ve left office for a while and “taken a break.”

Democratic Reps. Jose Alvarez of Kissimmee, LaVon Bracy Davis of Ocoee, Angie Nixon of Jacksonville and Marie Woodson of Hollywood complained about state overreach, arguing a one-size-fits-all approach to local governance could cause problems.

Nixon noted that at a time when there’s a push among Republicans at the federal level to send authority back to states, “it almost seems disingenuous with this now to impose the state’s choices on a local area.”

Islamorada Republican Rep. Jim Mooney expressed similar concerns, noting that what is appropriate for Holmes County may not benefit Duval County “and vice versa.” But he said he’d vote for the bill Wednesday with the expectation that it will be improved as it advances.

Miami Beach Republican Rep. Fabián Basabe defended the proposal. He said he used to think elections worked as de facto term limits, since voters had the opportunity to oust officials they disapproved of, but being a state lawmaker changed his perspective.

“We represent a voice in what controls such a massive economy, and locally those (County) Commissions and School Boards … are arguably equally as powerful of an economy,” he said. “I worry about the concentration of power not ever leaving room for new voices and accountability. And on top of that, I’m really interested in hearing from the voters on this.”

One person from the public signaled support for HJR 679. Thirty-seven opposed it, including numerous locally elected officials and representatives from the Florida Association of Counties and the Small County Coalition.

Rich Templin of the Florida AFL-CIO said the idea of blanket term limits for all state officials “has been floating around for about a decade” in Florida, but it’s failed repeatedly because imposing them would “change the fundamental structure of local community government without asking the local community.”

“The problem that we have here is that you are asking all of the voters in the entire state of Florida to make decisions that are going to impact individual communities that are far different than where those voters reside,” he said.

“There are currently four counties in the state right now who could vote, and if they all come out and vote, they could put this in the constitution. … But what about the smaller counties? What about the rural counties? I think you’ll hear from them later.”

That proved true. Ralph Thomas, a Commissioner in Wakulla, Florida’s smallest and newest county, said the right to home rule — local self-governance — was enshrined in the Florida Constitution in 1968 to allow local governments to impose term limits as they saw fit, among other things.

Today, 47 of Florida’s 67 counties have not adopted home rule charters and 20 have. Of those, 11 have term limits and nine don’t.

“There’s great diversity across our state with this opinion,” he said. “(HJR 679) gives the people nothing they don’t already possess. This just strips away the ability to choose who’s on the ballot.”

HJR 679, which advanced on an 11-6 vote Wednesday, will next go to the House State Affairs Committee before reaching a floor vote.

SB 802 advanced through its first of three stops on a 6-2 vote last month.

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A.G. Gancarski of Florida Politics contributed to this report.

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