With just over one month until the May 13 Republican primary for a special election to fill a recent Alabama House District 11 vacancy, the Cullman County Republican Party hosted both GOP candidates — former Cullman County School Board member Heath Allbright and retired U.S. Army Colonel Don Fallin — during its monthly breakfast Saturday, April 5. During the breakfast, they responded to several questions submitted by party members.

Overall, Fallin and Allbright mostly aligned on many of the issues presented during the forum such as regulations for small businesses, education and fiscal responsibility. Fallin said he believed this last point was, in his opinion, the “most challenging issue,” facing Alabamians.

“We need to hold the folks in Montgomery accountable for the hard dollars that we’ve worked for,” Fallin said.

Since announcing his candidacy, Fallin said he has spoken to several local industry leaders in Cullman and Blount County to gauge the needs within the community. He said, “It’s my job to take the requirements of those people and carry their message down to Montgomery.”

Allbright offered his perspective as the owner of Brighton Forestry, a timber management company, and said a “top-heavy government” focused on regulating industries had stifled business owners’ ability to grow the state’s workforce.

“It seems as if we have a regulation for a regulation,” Allbright said. “If my taxes were lower, I could hire more people and my business could grow. The way you do that is you cut taxes were you can and you get rid of as many regulations as you can.”

Fallin said he had already discussed eliminating the Alabama Income Tax with several unnamed “senior officials” from Montgomery.

“This is thinking a little outside the box,” Fallin said. “Let’s put that money back into the pockets of our people and let the government figure out how to make the mission happen.”

The candidates offered differing solutions to address the state’s sustained, low public school rankings.

Allbright cited the improvements within the Cullman County Schools system during his time on the board and said that he would support recent efforts of President Donald Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education.

“Obviously, the DOE does not educate anybody and you’ve seen what President Trump has done with cutting that out. While I was here [CCBOE] we were able to take our graduation rate and college/career readiness scores from the 88th percentile to the 99th percentile while I was there. I’m not taking all of that credit, but with superintendent Shane Barnette and the board, we were able to do a lot of good things with that.”

Fallin said he supported the 2019 Alabama Literacy Act which set standardized benchmarks in reading proficiency all third-grade students must meet before advancing to fourth-grade; but said he felt as though the state had fallen short on equipping educators with the appropriate resources to properly execute the goals of the legislation. Fallin said he would support expanding school choice options for parents which he believed would lower the student/teacher ratio in many public schools and allow teachers more time to focus on the individual needs of students.

“We need to provide the teachers with the resources they need to do their jobs and we need to make sure the Education Trust Fund is actually focused on education,” Fallin said.

Both candidates stood behind recent legislation to ban students from having cell phones in school and set a hardline stance against any future gambling legislation.

The District 11 Republican Primary election will be Tuesday, May 13.

Both candidates will join the Democratic candidate, Alexandria Braswell, for a similar former at Camp Meadowbrook on Thursday, May 1.