State Representative Lipper-Garabedian Maintains Perfect Voting Record and Supports Key Legislation in 2023
January 3, 2024 – In the first year of the 2023-2024 legislative session, State Representative Kate Lipper-Garabedian (D-Melrose) maintained her perfect voting record, participating in all 70 roll call votes recorded in the House of Representatives between February 1 and November 15, 2023. She also supported critical legislation, including her own nursing home reform bill which the House passed unanimously in November.
Representative Lipper-Garabedian represents the 32nd Middlesex District which includes the City of Melrose; Precincts 5, 6, and 7 of Wakefield; and Wards 5-2 and 5-3A of Malden. For the 2023-2024 legislative session, Representative Lipper-Garabedian serves as the Vice Chair of the Joint Committee on Elder Affairs and as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Joint Committee on Financial Services, and the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy.
“I am proud that, as State Representative to the 32nd Middlesex District, I have been present for every roll call vote in the House,” said Representative Lipper-Garabedian. “Over the last year, I joined my legislative colleagues in voting in favor of many pieces of legislation that will positively impact the 32nd Middlesex and the Commonwealth overall.”
In the 70 roll call votes Representative Lipper-Garabedian attended, she voted in support of a number of bills including:
· A comprehensive tax relief package, now signed into law, that is expected to provide $561 million in taxpayer savings this fiscal year. This package included Representative Lipper-Garabedian’s rental deduction bill which increases the rental deduction cap from $3,000 to $4,000, assisting approximately 80,000 renters across the state.
· Critical gun safety legislation, aimed at reducing gun violence in the Commonwealth through addressing ghost guns and other technological advancements, updating the State’s “Red Flag” law, and updating the assault weapon ban.
· Her bill filed with the Joint Committee on Elder Affairs House Chair Tom Stanley, An Act to improve quality and oversight of long-term care, to reform to the nursing home and long-term care industry. During the formal legislative session, Representative Lipper-Garabedian spoke in favor of the bill on the House floor, highlighting its provisions regarding small house nursing homes.
Among other key pieces of legislation addressed during roll call votes, Representative Lipper-Garabedian also voted in favor of salary transparency legislation to close racial and gender wage gaps and empower workers broadly and for a FY23 close-out supplemental budget that included investments in state employee collective bargaining agreements, reimbursements for out-of-district special education costs for school districts, Department of Transitional Assistance caseworkers, and the creation of a Home Care Consumer Directed Care Workforce Council, enabling workforce organization for the purposes of collective bargaining.
The final day of formal sessions for the 193rd General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is July 31, 2024.
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