Kenedy school board members voted 4-3 to deny a grievance brought forward by the publisher of a local newspaper during the meeting of the school board on July 19.

The complaint alleged that Superintendent Richard Irizarry unnecessarily delayed the release of minutes from school board meetings for 23 days.

After returning from closed session, Trustee Ed Monson made a motion to grant the Level III grievance which was seconded by Trustee Carl Lundquist. Monson, Lundquist and Trustee Velma Garza voted in favor of the motion, but Trustees Frank Nieto, Tony Mejia, Leo Valerio and Jimmy Burns voted against and the motion failed.

Board President Frank Nieto then made a motion to deny the grievance, seconded by Mejia. This vote carried with Nieto, Mejia, Valerio and Burns voting in favor while Monson, Lundquist and Garza voted against.

"The superintendent broke the law – it’s plain and simple," said Joe Baker, publisher of The Countywide.

"The law requires the superintendent to request a ruling from the Office of the Attorney General regarding any information the school district wishes to withhold, and send a copy of the request for ruling, or a redacted copy, to the requestor," Baker said. "Dr. Irizarry didn’t do that. It’s unfortunate that four of the seven trustees on the Kenedy school board don’t know enough about the law to understand when their superintendent is breaking it."

"We plan to take this complaint to the Attorney General’s office in Austin," Baker said. "Up there, they are very familiar with the law. They have a whole division assigned to investigate cases such as this. I’d hate to see Dr. Irizarry indicted for this, but it just may come to that."

Irizarry claimed that the delay was due to the fact that there were "contentious" issues discussed at the school board meetings in question, and he was concerned that there may have been inaccuracies in the draft versions of the minutes.

The Countywide tried to reach Irizarry for comment early this week but phone messages left for him were not immediately returned.

Information at the web site for the Texas Attorney General’s office says that there is often a misconception that the Public Information Act requires that copies of public information must be produced within ten days of the written request. However, the standard under the Public Information Act is actually that the entity must "promptly produce" the public information. Further, the Act states that all open records requests must be handled with good faith and must be accomplished within a reasonable time period.