About Anna

Dr. Anna Kelles is a public health scientist, environmental advocate, and New York State Assemblymember representing the 125th District, which includes Tompkins County and southwest Cortland County. Since taking office in 2021, she has brought a scientist’s discipline and a deep commitment to public service to her work in Albany.

Anna serves as Chair of the Legislative Commission on Rural Resources and is a member of the Assembly Committees on Agriculture, Correction, Environmental Conservation, Health, Higher Education, and Housing. She also serves on the Executive Board of the Legislative Women’s Caucus, a bicameral and bipartisan body advancing policies that support women and families across New York.

LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITIES & ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Her work focuses on strengthening the systems people rely on every day, from clean water and safe food to housing, energy, transportation, and health care, while ensuring rural and upstate communities are not left behind.

Anna is best known statewide for sponsoring and passing New York’s first-in-the-nation proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining moratorium, which required a comprehensive environmental impact review of the industry’s energy use, water consumption, climate emissions, and community impacts. The State has since completed a draft environmental impact statement, informing next steps for responsible oversight.

She has also passed a series of environmental and public health laws to protect ecosystems and water quality, including legislation promoting native plants and ecological landscaping, strengthening protections for waterways, and increasing transparency around harmful chemicals in food and the environment.

Her legislative work reflects a strong focus on rural infrastructure and practical, on-the-ground needs. She passed legislation to ensure nonprofit car-sharing organizations can access affordable insurance, preserving critical transportation options in communities where car ownership is not always feasible. She also sponsored and led the effort to enact legislation allowing EMS providers to receive Medicaid reimbursement when they treat patients in place or transport patients to an appropriate alternative destination instead of a hospital emergency room, establishing a long-needed reimbursement pathway that strengthens EMS systems, improves patient care, and helps keep emergency responders available in their communities.

Anna has been a leading voice on housing and land use reform, working to make it easier to build affordable housing in walkable, vibrant communities while protecting the environment. With Senator Rachel May, she introduced legislation to modernize New York’s environmental review process for qualifying infill housing, reducing unnecessary delays while maintaining strong environmental standards and helping to prevent sprawl. She also supported inclusion of the single-stair building reform in the state budget, expanding opportunities for more flexible, cost-effective housing design.

Her work in energy policy focuses on affordability, reliability, and long-term system planning. She is the sponsor of the Grid-Enhancing Advanced Technologies (GREAT) Act, which would establish a statewide virtual power plant using everyday energy devices to reduce peak demand, lower costs, and strengthen the grid, and has advanced legislation to support electric vehicle charging infrastructure and responsible planning for large energy users. She also developed a first-in-the-nation agrivoltaics research program in partnership with Cornell University and secured $2 million in funding over three years to study best practices for co-locating solar energy and active farmland, supporting both clean energy development and the long-term viability of agriculture in New York.

Anna has also been a consistent advocate for justice reform. She carries the Earned Time Act, which would allow incarcerated individuals to earn time off their sentences through participation in education, job training, and rehabilitation programs, and the CARE Act, which strengthens protections for pregnant and postpartum people in custody. She also passed legislation providing limited criminal immunity for people engaged in sex work who are victims or witnesses of crime, ensuring they can seek medical care and report violence without fear of prosecution.

ANNA’S BACKGROUND

Anna grew up in Trumansburg, studied biology and environmental science at Binghamton University, worked in the Amazon as an ecological guide and teacher, and earned a PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has served as faculty at Cornell University, Ithaca College, and as Dean of the School of Nutrition at New York Chiropractic College. She served for five years on the Tompkins County Legislature before being elected to the State Assembly.

Her work is grounded in a simple principle, government should solve real problems, operate transparently and fairly, and help build communities where people and the natural world can thrive.

Issues