Freshman legislator hosts first public town hall

A freshman state representative hosted his first public town hall since taking office.

Rep. John Jacob, R-Indianapolis, gave a recap of the 2021 legislative session to a small group of constituents Thursday night at Aletheia Church on the southside of Indianapolis. Jacob, so far, has not participated in other local legislative events, such as Aspire Johnson County’s Legislation Matters luncheons, or the town halls in April hosted by local legislators Reps. Michelle Davis and John Young, and Sen. Greg Walker.

Jacob is in his first term at the Indiana House of Representatives. He spent his first legislative session authoring several bills, resolutions and amendments, which is rare for a freshman member to do.

He authored seven of his own bills — all of which never made it out of committee to the House floor — and authored and co-authored 16 House resolutions and concurrent resolutions. Also, along with Rep. Curt Nisly, R-Milford, Jacob drafted 66 amendments to various bills in the House, most of which did not pass.

Jacob’s main platforms when he ran for office included ending abortion in Indiana, protecting the Second Amendment by legalizing permit-less carry, and lowering taxes.

He failed to accomplish any of that because none of his legislation was given an initial hearing, he said Thursday. He gave a brief summary of those measures, which included legislation that would have eliminated straight-ticket voting, a bill that would have banned minors from transitioning to the opposite sex and a bill that would have banned requiring parents wishing to foster or adopt children to undergo immunization if it is against their beliefs.

Jacob also attempted to pass a bill that would have restored the original Religious Freedom Restoration Act from 2015, before it was amended to protect specifically LGBTQ people from discrimination at businesses.

And he tried to redefine adjusted gross income by drafting a bill that would  have essentially stopped the state from taking taxes out of residents’ income.

He also wrote his own bill that would have eliminated permits to carry firearms in Indiana, but it was not heard.

The House did push another bill, House Bill 1369, that would have also eliminated firearm carry permits and require a database to track who could not own guns in the state. Jacob voted against that bill, one of the only Republicans to do so, because the database made it too restrictive, he said.

On abortion, Jacob’s main platform, he co-authored with Nisly a bill to end abortion in Indiana, which died in committee. Jacob then tried and failed to pass a House Resolution urging Gov. Eric Holcomb to close abortion clinics. He also tried to amend several other bills to end abortion.

“I’ve made myself clear that I do not want to regulate abortion. I want to end abortion,” Jacob said.

The town hall lasted two hours, during which Jacob recapped the entire session and took an hour of questions and comments from the audience.

More than 30 people attended and asked questions, mostly about COVID-19 vaccine requirements in the state, which Jacob advocated against and helped foster a law that banned government-issued vaccine passports in Indiana.

Most constituents in the audience praised Jacob, and occasionally shouted “amen” and “we the people” when they agreed with what he was saying.

Angela Elliott, a Democrat who ran against Jacob for the District 93 seat, questioned why Jacob would write a bill redefining adjusted gross income without examining the repercussions of the legislation first, calling the bill a joke because he knew it would not pass, she said.

Jacob did not think the bill was a joke, and he was trying to fulfill his promises to lower taxes in the state, he said.

Dollyne Sherman, a Republican who formerly held Jacob’s seat and lost to him in the primary election last June, also attended the town hall. She questioned him about education funding and how the legislature plans to help students get back on track after spending more than year doing hybrid or virtual learning.

K-12 schools in Indiana received a historical $1.9 billion in new dollars this year from federal and state pandemic relief money. Jacob told Sherman he thinks schools should have never closed in the first place as part of Holcomb’s response to the pandemic, which he has openly criticized. But he did not have a breakdown of where the funding will go to help schools. He told Sherman he would get a copy to her.

Jacob considers himself a disruptor in the Republican party, he said. He told the group at the town hall Thursday that most other legislators are not fans of him. He and Nisly are minorities in their own party, with most Republicans blocking or voting against legislation and amendments they draft, he said.

“There were people in the Republican establishment who sympathized with me … However, they felt pressure from the establishment not to go along,” Jacob said. “I understand from their perspective that Curt Nisly and myself are the people walking upside down, but I asked them to consider maybe it’s them that are walking upside down.”

Jacob expects the party will either redistrict District 93 to get him out of office, or pit someone against him in the 2022 primary, he said. He is not worried about winning or losing re-election though, he said.

“The way that they treat me behind the scenes, why would I expect anything less? No, I’m not worried about it,” Jacob said.