| Representative Jennifer Boylan, a Democrat, was first elected to represent District 66 in Barrington and Riverside in November 2022. She serves as a member of the House Environment & Natural Resources Committee and the House Innovation, Internet & Technology Committee.
During the 2024 legislative session she made important progress on environmental issues. She successfully passed a law requiring that climate change and its effects are considered in Rhode Island's economic development plans, along with a law to regulate the legal use of electric bikes.
She also successfully lobbied for a pilot rebate program for electric leaf blowers for commercial landscapers to be included in the 2025 fiscal year budget. Representative Boylan's bill to update the alcoholism statute also passed in 2024.
Beginning in the 2023 legislative session, Representative Boylan chaired a study commission to bring together experts and stakeholders to study school lockdowns, safety drills and responses to threats. This study commission met repeatedly in the fall of 2023 and the winter of 2024 and included public safety officials, teachers, students, mental health professionals and legislators. It was tasked with answering complex questions such as whether and when students should be encouraged to evacuate during lockdown events, whether advanced notice should be provided to students or parents prior to a lockdown drill and whether the frequency of drills should be changed.
As a result of the findings of this commission, Representative Boylan successfully passed a law in 2024 to modernize school safety drills.
In 2023 and 2024, Representative Boylan represented the Rhode Island House of Representatives at two convenings of state legislative leaders on gun violence prevention hosted and organized by the White House's first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris.
During her first year in office, Representative Boylan supported efforts to improve housing affordability, public education, environmental protection and gun safety. She successfully passed a law that allows 17-year-olds to vote in primaries if they will be 18 by the general election. She cosponsored legislation to expand abortion access and supported a package of new laws to address the state's housing crisis. She also introduced a tangible tax reduction bill to help small businesses and supported the tangible tax reduction bill that ultimately became law. The new exemption wipes out the tangible tax - viewed as an administrative burden for small businesses and for the municipalities that collect it - for 75% of Rhode Island businesses.
Representative Boylan grew up in upstate New York. She is a graduate of New Hartford Senior High School in New Hartford, NY. She is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College, majoring in geology, and earned her master's degree in earth and planetary science from Washington University.
With a background in science and geology, the first 14 years of Representative Boylan's career were spent as an environmental professional. She worked as a government contractor, doing environmental investigations and as litigation consultant helping clients access funding for hazardous waste cleanups. She left that business in 2004 to become the Dire ctor of Operations for PacketLogix.
Prior to being elected to the RI House of Representatives, Representative Boylan spent 10 years advocating for common sense gun laws. In 2018, Gov. Gina Raimondo appointed her as a member of the Working Group for Gun Safety. She has served as an environmental champion in her community for many years, promoting initiatives like composting, waste minimization, banning plastic bags, safe athletic fields, and protecting local farmland and public open space.
Representative Boylan lives in Barrington with her husband. They have two sons. |