One week after voting to censure trustee Terri Romere, the Round Rock ISD board of trustees voted 6-0 to halt working on an information request made by Romere until she could demonstrate the information is "appropriate and necessary."

The information request asked for a wide range of documents between board members and staff during a 25-day period in April, according to an email Romere sent to RRISD Superintendent Jesus Chavez and obtained through a public information request.

On April 26, the day after Romere was censured, she requested all "documentation and communication (phone logs, emails, texts and any other means of communication) from any and all trustees and staff member conducting board business from April 1 thru end of business [April 26]," according to the email.

Chavez said during a May 1 RRISD board meeting that when he asked for clarification on the word "staff" and the types of information requested, Romere provided a little clarification on the types of documents through examples.

"But it pretty much just requested all board-related documents over the last 25 days and no clarification on staff," Chavez said.

According to RRISD Legal Counsel Bill Bingham, there is a statute that says an individual board member has the right to access board information when acting in "official board capacity." However, Bingham said, official capacity isn't clearly defined but normally involves a board member acting on behalf of the public or requesting information that has bearing on her ability to perform his or her job.

"Is it proper for us to find out what the official business is here?" trustee Diane Cox asked during the May 1 meeting. "We're talking about hours and hours and hours of our staff's time, and we're supposed to be stewards of the taxpayers' money here. And in my opinion, this request is a burdensome request of staff.

"Can we say, 'What do you want?' Why are you looking for it in your official capacity?' If you're going to spend hours of our staff's time, we want to know why," she said.

Also requested by Romere in the email were three copies of the video of the April 24 board meeting, which she asked to be dropped at her home office by 5 p.m. that day.

The requested video was going to be available on the Web the morning after, trustee Charles Chadwell said.

"The request for these videos was just the icing on the cake," Chadwell said, "I thought that was retaliatory, vindictive ... I just thought that was very unreasonable."

This particular request came immediately after a vote to censure Romere, trustee Catherine Hanna said.

"It asked for an unreasonable deadline, asked for unreasonable things, it was probably written by an attorney ... I think it's a set-up," Hanna said.

According to Romere's attorney, her request was prompted by a communication from Chadwell indicating that a majority of the board had communicated about efforts to censure Romere "outside of a properly posted meeting," Ross Fischer wrote in an email.

"She's attempting to gather information to determine whether they have violated the Open Meetings Act," Fischer wrote in a separate email.

Also In Fischer's email, he provided a screenshot of a text message exchange between Romere and Chadwell in which Romere asks which trustees requested the censure, and Chadwell responded with several initials of board members.

"My fellow board members have spent countless hours trying to marginalize me," Romere said, according to an official statement emailed by Fischer. "Prior to the vote for censure, board president Chadwell communicated to me that at least four of the board members appear to have communicated about the vote outside of a posted meeting. They are now stonewalling attempts to dispel this."

When asked about the text message, Chadwell had a different account.

"We had actually added a discussion of her censure to the next agenda at a closed session meeting on April 19—she was not in that closed session, she had left," Chadwell said. "So it was not discussed outside of a meeting."

The discussion at the May 1 board meeting concluded with Hanna requesting a motion for Chavez to cease working on the request made by Romere until she provides information from which the board can determine whether the request is appropriate and necessary. The motion carried 6-0.

"Since the board has turned down my request as a trustee, I will be refiling my request under the Public Information Act." Romere said, according to her attorney's email communication.