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Fulton, Fallon could run for new House seat
By Chris Roark, croark@acnpapers.com
Amber Fulton, former Lewisville ISD board member, and Pat Fallon, Frisco Mayor Pro Tem, have appointed campaign treasurers with the possibility of running for District 106 for the Texas House of Representatives.
District 106 is a new district created to address the growing population. It includes The Colony, Little Elm, Cross Roads and Oak Point, as well as the Denton County portion of Frisco.
The Republican Primary will take place March 6, 2012, and the general election is in the following November. The winner will join Denton County representatives Tan Parker, Myra Crownover and Burt Solomons.
Fulton said she feels like she would make a good state representative because of the similarities between her role on the board and the duties of a representative.
"A state representative works with people in all stages of life," Fulton said. "They serve broad areas and they care about what is valuable to so many people, which is quality of life. And that's what I did as a board member. As I started focusing on the parallels between the two, the idea really started to take off."
Fulton said her trips to Austin and around the state, though she didn't know it at the time, have helped prepare her for this possible role as well.
"As a board member, I developed a broad sense of advocacy," Fulton said. "Not just with LISD, but with public education across Texas. As I became a more seasoned board member, I became more interested in advocacy and having meetings with representatives down in Austin."
Fulton said her participation in Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) also helped pave the way for her legislative run. In 2009, she was selected to Leadership TASB, where she visited various districts in the state that ranged in economic status and technology availability. She said watching how some districts educate students, even without having the technology that other districts have, helped her understand how the state can work together by sharing ideas.
Fulton describes herself as a fiscal conservative and said her goal, if elected, is to cut wasteful spending and keep taxes low for families and small businesses.
Her other experience includes serving on the Texas PTA Board of Directors, Communities in Schools of North Texas and the UNT College of Education Development Board.
Fallon, a Republican, said he has the right mix of military experience, entrepreneurship and civic service, having served on the council for two years.
He, too, describes himself as a strong conservative. But he said he has the experience to back it up.
"Everyone will use buzzwords like 'fiscally responsible' and 'conservative,'" Fallon said. "But you have to look beyond the rhetoric and look at the records."
For Fallon, that record includes voting against a tax rate increase in Frisco in 2009, voting against a budget that he calls "raiding the reserves" in 2010 and approving a budget that calls for a reduced tax rate this year. He said he has campaigned for more than 60 conservative causes or candidates.
"You can't fake a track record like that for 20 years," Fallon said.
He also points to his efforts in ensuring voter rights, such as pushing for the 5,000 Frisco residents living within LISD to have just one voting location rather than having to go to three sites for three different elections.
And he said his actions regarding the Arts of Collin County bonds show his desire to represent every resident as well. He questioned Frisco taking on so much debt for the facility that he said should be privately, not publically, funded. Earlier this year, $16.4 million in bonds, which were passed in 2002, were revoked.
Fallon said Fulton has made the mistake of not putting certain key issues to a vote. He points to her trip to Austin earlier this year in which she and then-board president Carol Kyer lobbied the legislature to allow school boards to raise the Maintenance and Operations (M&O) tax rate to $1.17 without having an election.
"That's not consistent with a conservative in Denton County," Fallon said. "This is something that you should ask people if that's what they want."
That issue was brought up during last spring's school board election. At that time, Fulton responded by saying, "What we asked for is the flexibility in this unprecedented funding crisis. We said, 'If there is anything you can do to relax any restrictions to school districts that are not going to cost you [the state] any money and not going to cost us [the district] any money, please do that. Even if it's for a very short period of time, for two years or four years, we will accept that."
She added that the school board approved the legislative agenda, 6-1.
For information on Fulton's campaign, go to www.amberfortexas.com.
For information on Fallon's campaign, go to www.FallonForTexas.com.
The following are comments from the readers.
In no way do they represent the view of Starlocalnews.com
In no way do they represent the view of Starlocalnews.com
eagleclaw wrote on Aug 31, 2011 3:30 PM:
" I hope voters in Denton County are not fooled by Pat Fallon's money and slick talk. He is a Collin County resident and another person trying to buy a seat in thr Texas House. "
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