Representative Jennifer Boylan
Member, House Environment and Natural Resources Committee
Member, House Health and Human Services Committee
Member, House Oversight Committee
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 and Natural Resources Committee, the House Health and Human
Services Committee, and the House Oversight 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 Director 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.