New scorecard grades Indiana legislators on economic votes

(The Center Square) – A new scorecard that grades state legislators based on their votes in support of property rights and lower taxes has just been revealed.

The “Indiana Scorecard” shows two Republican lawmakers with scores in the 80s, one in the 60s, and all others with scores in the 50s or below – meaning they only supported property rights and lower taxes about half the time or less.

Speaker of the House Todd Huston, R-Fishers, scored 29% for the last legislative session, though it’s based on limited votes as the speaker doesn’t cast votes on most bills.

The scorecard was put together by Jason Arp, a Fort Wayne city councilman known as a fiscal conservative. He gave a presentation on it Dec. 11 at an Indiana Policy Review conference in Warsaw, Indiana.

“I’ve been doing scorecards since I ran [Indiana Rep.] Chris Judy’s campaign back in 2014,” he said, adding he did another one in 2016 and also one for a conservative political action committee called ICE PAC.

“They were never published. They were just a collection of spreadsheets I would show to potential donors,” he said.

He realized not long ago the information he was compiling on the voting record of legislators on economic issues is something the public would probably want to see.

Arp said the problem he’s run into in talking with voters is they usually believe their legislator is representing their interests in Indianapolis, when he thinks that’s often not the case.

“I ask them, have you ever seen their voting record? They vote to take your money and give it to other people all the time,” he says.

The Indiana Scorecard, at the website Indianascorecard.org, lists all members of the Indiana House of Representatives and scores them based on their votes on 35 bills in the 2021 legislative session. By clicking through on a legislator’s name, a voter can also see their scores going back to 2016, and see their career score – the average of their scores over six years.

For the 2021 session, the first vote listed is HB 1004 – the Small Business Restart Program, which awarded money to help small businesses in the state restart operations after the pandemic.

When asked why he picked this vote, Arp said the idea of the bill could be translated as: “We’ll give you help restarting your business that we just destroyed.”

“People are always going to question how you score something,” he says. “But people can always look at the bills for themselves…I think people that care about these issues, specifically the property rights issue, will side with me.”

Another bill that was included is a bill that granted immunity to businesses related to COVID-19.

Arp said he considers legislators who voted for it were voting against economic liberty, as it would exempt corporations from any liability in this one particular category, leaving individuals no recourse in case of damages.

To develop the scorecard, he traveled to Pennsylvania and met with a group called CAP, Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, which launched a legislative scorecard in the summer of 2019, also based on economic liberty issues. He says he ended up working with people in Texas who helped him build the site.

The two legislators who earned the highest scores are Rep. John Jacob, R-Indianapolis, who got 86%, and Rep. Curt Nisly, R-Milford, who got 83%. Neither are members of the House Republican Campaign Committee, the group that raises money for most legislators.

Arp said legislators tend to start voting in lock step with the House Republican leadership once HRCC starts raising their money for them.

He said he’s going to be adding a “campaign finance module” to the site, so people can look at how much money candidates are raising and from whom as they look at how they voted on key economic issues.

The highest-scoring Democrat on the Indiana Scorecard is Rep. Ryan Hatfield, D-Evansville, who got a 35%.

Republican Floor Leader Matt Lehman, R-Berne, received a 37%.

The lowest-scoring legislator is Rep. Tonya Pfaff, D-Terre Haute, who scored 18%.

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