Our local newspaper is not serving our community well. The word "newspaper" could be considered to be two words. The first is "news," and the second is paper. Unfortunately, far too often all we get is the latter and not the former.

For example, let's consider the last Texas Legislature session which received zero coverage in the paper. Among the bills considered was one raising gas taxes by 125 percent.

Lampasas is a big hunting county. Another bill would subject anyone who hunts to animal cruelty charges. Hunting could be used as a defense but only after you were arrested, tried and had to hire a lawyer.

Another bill under the guise of noise abatement had the potential to totally ban the discharge of firearms in Texas and would ban target shooting, hunting, any discharge of a firearm.

The list goes on and on of bad bills you didn't hear about.

There are far too many articles in our paper that could be described as "Aunt Matilda visited Aunt Maude today." Perhaps even with banner headlines. At the same time, none of the issues in the state legislature that could have a significant impact on our lives was reported. For instance, if you own a boat, did you know a bill was introduced that would have required you to get a special driver's license to operate your boat? Did you see that in our paper?

This paper never reports votes on issues by our state legislators. Why is that?

The purpose of this letter is to encourage the Lampasas Dispatch Record to stop being a paper and start being a newspaper. I applaud them for their editorials and open letters to the editor policy. Let's extend that to news reporting, as well.

Donald N. Baker