And that, said Pat Shea, a Salt Lake City attorney, does not shield Ogden from complying with the Government Records Access and Management Act.

"Two years after the fact, it seems to me it's being used to shield political reputations," said Shea.

The Sierra Club is suing the Ogden Records Review Board. Last summer, the board provided only some of the e-mails, documents and studies local Sierra official Dan Schroeder sought through a GRAMA request.

Requests for other documents were denied. Some requests were labeled "correspondence," some "private" and some "protected."

Shea told Judge W. Brent West that the city must provide more detail than that for the Sierra Club to know whether the city has a lawful reason to keep the records secret. "That's not telling us the substance that's there."

But Stanley Preston, also a Salt Lake City attorney, argued that the city complied with GRAMA, and that the Sierra Club is essentially using the lawsuit's discovery process to get what the lawsuit is all about: access to records.

The only choice, he said, is for the judge to go through the records himself and determine whether they should be made public.

Preston also objected to Shea's contention that because the gondola negotiations are over, all the records should be public.

"It would put the city at a competitive disadvantage," he said, referring to possible future negotiations.

West did not rule, but said the city's one-word labels appeared "too broad" while the Sierra Club's request for an index "too specific."

kmoulton@sltrib.com