Beacon Hill Roll Call
By BOB KATZEN
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
(Published in print: Wednesday, September 2, 2015)
This week’s report is on the 2015 roll call attendance record of your local representatives through August 28. Some representatives may have poor attendance records for a variety of reasons, including health problems or military service. We asked the five legislators with the worst attendance records to explain their reasons for missing votes.
THE HOUSE AND SENATE. There were no roll call votes in the House or Senate last week. This week, Beacon Hill Roll Call reports local representatives roll call attendance records for the 2015 session through August 28.
The House has held 156 roll call votes. Beacon Hill Roll Call tabulates the number of roll calls on which each representative was present and voting and then calculates that number as a percentage of the total roll call votes held. That percentage is the number referred to as the roll call attendance record.
Only 69 (34.5 percent) of the House’s 160 members have 100 percent roll call attendance records.
The representative who missed the most roll calls is Rep. Harold Naughton (D-Clinton), who missed 112 (28.2 percent attendance) because of his military service.
Also included in the top five worst records are Reps. Gail Cariddi (D-North Adams), who missed 101 (35.3 percent attendance); Gerald Parisella (D-Beverly) and Louis Kafka (D-Sharon), who missed 100 (35.9 percent attendance); and Evandro Carvalho (D-Dorchester), who missed 54 roll calls (65.4 percent).
Pariselli missed many votes because of his military service, Cariddi and Kafka both had medical issues and Carvalho’s wife gave birth to their first child.
REPRESENTATIVES’ 2015 ROLL CALL ATTENDANCE THROUGH AUGUST:
The percentage listed next to the representative’s name is the percentage of roll call votes for which he or she was present and voting. The number in parentheses represents the number of roll calls that the representative missed.
Rep. Stephen Kulik 99.4 percent (1)
Rep. Paul Mark 100 percent (0)
Rep. Susannah Whipps Lee 100 percent (0)