The lawsuit was filed in 2nd District Court on Oct. 30, but the Sierra Club did not announce the case until Wednesday to avoid the appearance of trying to sway voters in the recent municipal election, said Dan Schroeder, conservation chairman of the Ogden group of the Sierra Club.

Ogden City Attorney Gary Williams said Wednesday that he could not comment because the city had not yet been served.

The lawsuit revolves around two requests Schroeder made last summer under Utah's Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA), which the city only partially filled.

As an advocate of mass transit, the Sierra Club is closely following Mayor Matthew Godfrey's promotion of a gondola that would lead to the foothills and possibly link with another to a resort in Malans Basin above the city. Godfrey no longer advocates selling the east-side golf course to finance the gondola, but has not said the gondola is off the table.

In June, Schroeder, acting for the Sierra Club, requested records of communication between the city and Utah Transit Authority, as well as other records on gondola-related studies. In July, he requested records of communication between the city and Chris Peterson, the owner of Malans Basin and the developer who wanted to buy the golf course and run the urban and mountain gondolas.

Although the city provided some records to Schroeder, it refused to make others public, calling them protected under GRAMA.

The lawsuit alleges that the city failed to adequately describe the withheld records, to disclose the existence of certain records and failed to locate others that were later found. It asks Judge Brent West to declare that Ogden City failed to comply with GRAMA, and that the public interest in particular records trumps Ogden's interest in restricting them. It also seeks an order requiring Ogden to make the records available and asks the judge to keep an eye over the case to ensure compliance.

kmoulton@sltrib.com