AZLE — All the Azle News wanted was a copy of a report. But the request resulted in the local school district suing the state’s top law enforcer.

On Feb. 13 the News requested a copy of Azle Independent School District superintendent Edd Bigbee’s “plan of action,” which was approved by the board at its previous meeting separately from his evaluation.

The school district denied the request, saying it was part of his evaluation. The district sought an attorney general opinion on the document’s release.

In a letter the News received dated April 30 the attorney general’s office held that the plan was not part of the superintendent’s evaluation and that it must be released to the requestor. The school board on May 8 met to consider its response and voted unanimously to sue Attorney General Greg Abbott in an effort to keep from releasing the document.

An editorial, as well as letters to the editor published in the News, later criticized the board’s decision to fight the release of a document the AG ruled should be made available to the public.

“In my opinion what we’re facing here is the practice of taking excerpts from a closed document and sprinkling them into what would otherwise be an open document in an attempt to render it closed,” News publisher Bob Buckel said. “This board has been meeting to ‘evaluate the superintendent’ every month for the past eight months behind closed doors. They did not act on his contract at the last normal renewal date, allowing him to go into the next-to-last year of what once was a three-year contract, but that’s the only hint we’ve had they might be unhappy with him.”