We are in the dawn weeks of 2024, and business is returning to normal after the holiday season.

Frequent readers of The Covington News have seen me take my writer’s pen into the sports section during the first few weeks of the new year, where I’ve had a few hot takes up my sleeve about my favorite football teams. I encourage you to read those if you’re interested.

However, for this opinion piece, I want to talk about something that I’ve noticed on the news side of things and the job I perform on a daily basis.

I’m talking about my coverage of  local government.

Before I go too far in depth into what I have to say,  I want to preface this by saying that is not my “passion” in writing. I never grew up wanting to write or cover anything politically related. Heck, if you would’ve asked me this time last year what a city council or a board of commissioners was, I would’ve been like, “What’s that? Do they run things?”

I covered my first ever local government entity back in May 2023 as an intern for The Monticello News, covering the Jasper County Board of Commissioners. Immediately, the first takeaway I had from that meeting was that A) There’s a whole lot of talk over nothing, and B) They argue… a lot.

Over six months, I covered several local government entities in Jasper County before getting the chance to be the main man that covers local government in Newton County.

On my second day as news editor, I covered my first Newton County Board of Commissioners meeting. It was a packed courthouse full of passionate citizens and commissioners alike. But the one takeaway I had after that meeting – and I remember telling my parents this word for word – was, “They argue more than the Jasper County BOC does.”

Now, I don’t mean this to be a shot at the Newton County BOC, in particular, but that’s just personally how I saw things to be at that meeting. And honestly, I saw that quite frequently for the rest of 2023 as well with nearly every other meeting I covered.

As we sit just weeks into 2024, I’ve had the chance to cover three meetings so far: the city of Porterdale, the city of Covington and the aforementioned Newton County BOC. In those three meetings that I’ve covered, one thing stuck out to me as unique when comparing the trio.

Every single vote went 5-0. Yes, I repeat, every business item that could be voted on went 5-0.

Now again, I am by no means an expert on politics or local government, but I haven’t seen that type of unity in any of the boards since I’ve started my professional career. To say I was surprised to see that in comparing my notes, is an understatement.

So, what is this 22-year-old, long-haired hippie writer asking each of the Newton County boards to consider for 2024? More unity!

Now I may be young, but I’m not naive. Disagreements in politics are certain to happen. A world where politicians agree on everything is as certain as you or me winning the lottery. It’s almost guaranteed not to happen.

I don’t expect every vote and business item this year to pass 5-0 with no discourse or arguments – and that’s the great thing about our democracy. It is completely OK to have civilized conversations and discussions over topics that are affecting the citizens of the county, city or whatever it may be.

But sometimes, what are our politicians even arguing for? Are they arguing for the betterment of the citizens? Or is it something else? That’s only a question they can answer.

Let me say that I have the utmost respect for all of the elected officials in Newton County. You all do a thankless job that I and so many others couldn’t even dream of doing.

As the news editor of The Covington News, and man leading the charge in government coverage for our publication, I will continue to cover the good, the bad, the great and the ugly of these meetings and do so in the most transparent way possible for our audience.

But as a columnist and one with an opinion separate of what I get paid to cover – I hope that the first meetings in 2024 are a sign of greater things to come. More unity, less arguments and moving forward together.

And if that happens, maybe I’ll go to the store and buy a lottery ticket.

Evan Newton is the news editor of The Covington News. He can be reached at enewton@covnews.com.