Our editorial policy is to encourage active participation and intelligent dialogue on our opinion pages.

We accept the fact that people will agree or disagree with our own opinions.

The opinions expressed on this page are the consensus of our editorial board, which is comprised of the publisher, general manager and editor of the paper.

Their names are clearly shown at the top of this page along with all the other managers of The Covington News.

We encourage letters of comment on local issues, but we do require that they be signed and contain a phone number for editorial confirmation. We do not allow anonymous comments to be made because if you feel it is important enough to publish in the paper, a record of county events for future generations, then your comments should be attributable.

Sometimes people become angry upon reading our opinions and accuse us of not supporting the community or being outsiders. The Morris family has owned The Covington News since 1986 and every manager that works for this paper lives in our reading area and is involved in civic organizations and churches.

The only time we would not run a letter is if it is from someone outside of our readership area, is not signed or pertains to a personal matter that is of no public interest.

If reading this opinion page has made you think or speak with others about your perspective on a certain matter, whether we agree with those thoughts or not, then we have accomplished our goal.