Issues

As a Perinton homeowner, Jen knows the tax burden on middle-class families here is real. In Albany, she helped secure a $2.2 billion property tax rebate for New York homeowners and worked to accelerate the middle-class tax cut to the lowest rate families have seen in 70 years — while pushing to reduce unfunded mandates and expand shared services so local governments can keep costs down.

Jen is also taking on the bills that hit hardest. She fought for POWER utility refund checks for New York households and reforms that force utilities to justify every rate increase, and she won consumer protections in auto insurance: a cap on insurer profits, refunds when companies overcharge, and a ban on setting your rates based on your zip code, your education, or whether you own your home.

Jen spent a decade in the legal field before taking office, and she brings that experience to keeping our communities safe. She has voted for New York's strongest gun-safety measures — Red Flag laws, a ban on ghost guns, limits on body armor sales, and permit requirements for purchasing semi-automatic rifles before age 21.

Closer to home, Jen has delivered equipment funding for the Fairport Police Department, sponsors legislation to help volunteer fire departments and EMS agencies recruit and retain members, and hosted a community Narcan training event to help neighbors respond to fentanyl overdoses.

Jen's commitment to reproductive freedom predates her time in office, when she organized alongside reproductive-justice attorneys. In the Assembly, she helped pass the New York Equality Amendment twice, enshrining protections in our state constitution so that rights don't depend on which way the political wind is blowing.

She voted for the Equal Rights Amendment and its reproductive-health protections, and as other states roll back care, her position is simple: in New York, decisions about pregnancy belong to patients — and Jen is working to keep it that way.

Jen serves on the Assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee, where she is the east side's voice on the issues we live with every day: pushing back on expansion at the High Acres landfill, fighting for state funding to replace lead water pipes in our historic villages, and pushing for septic-to-sewer conversion funding for the half of her district that still relies on septic systems. She helped secure the $4.2 billion Environmental Bond Act and the $1 billion Sustainable Futures Fund, and co-sponsored the constitutional amendment guaranteeing every New Yorker the right to clean air and water.

Jen has delivered millions in direct investment to the towns and villages of the 135th — $1 million for the new Perinton Park skatepark, $265,000 for canal-front improvements on Liftbridge Lane in Fairport, $250,000 to restore East Rochester's West Filbert Street sewers, $250,000 for an ADA-accessible elevator in the Eyer Building, and technology upgrades for our local libraries.

She also fights for the institutions that hold communities together: sponsoring the LOCAL Act, a tax credit to help small businesses advertise in local news outlets, and showing up — year after year — for the schools, libraries, fire departments, and main streets of every town she represents.

Healthcare is Jen's deepest expertise. She concentrated in health law at Boston University and spent her legal career representing injured and disabled New Yorkers. In office, she wrote the state's new allergen-labeling law after her own son's emergency, and she has led the public fight to fix how New York funds nursing homes — because Monroe County cannot afford to keep losing beds. She helped secure $750 million for hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted living, $50 million for hospice care, and raises for direct-support professionals — and announced the state funding behind Upstate New York's first residential eating-disorder treatment facility for adolescents, taking shape right here in the district.

Jen promised to fully fund our schools — and delivered. New York's Foundation Aid formula is now fully funded, with a 2% hold-harmless so no district loses ground, and universal pre-K is coming to every school district in the state by 2028. That means real money for classrooms across the 135th, and real relief for the property taxpayers who would otherwise pick up the bill.

Jen is also a proud champion of the district's student robotics teams — Penfield's own FIRST Robotics Team 1511 has demonstrated its robots at the Capitol's STEAM Day with support from her office — and she sponsors legislation to expand Career and Technical Education aid for the students who learn by building.

Jen knows the math of childcare in New York because she has lived it. In her first months in office she introduced three childcare-affordability bills and sponsored the bill, passed by the Assembly, to guarantee that parents forced to leave work when they lose childcare can collect unemployment insurance. Since then she has helped win historic childcare investments — including a $20 million universal childcare pilot for Monroe County and $400,000 for the new childcare center at Penfield's Eastside Family YMCA, built to serve 120 kids in the middle of a childcare desert.

Jen has been one of the Assembly's loudest voices on the nursing-home funding crisis, fighting year after year for the Medicaid reimbursement fix our senior-care providers need — and helping secure $750 million for hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted living, plus $50 million for hospice. At home, she has funded senior programming at Fairport Baptist Homes, delivered the ADA-accessible elevator in East Rochester's Eyer Building, published senior resource guides for towns across the district, and hosted an elder-fraud seminar with Attorney General Letitia James to help protect older neighbors.

Jen took office in the depths of the pandemic, when local unemployment hit 8.6% — and went straight to work on recovery, voting for $800 million in small-business recovery grants and the state's restaurant resiliency program. Today she sponsors a Rochester Chamber–backed tax credit to help small businesses advertise in local media, and keeps fighting for the workforce that keeps our region running.

That means raises for the direct-support professionals who care for our most vulnerable neighbors, pension fixes for the public workforce, and state budgets that invest in the people who keep our region running.