Salt Lake City squabbles with Jordan River activist over public records request

SALT LAKE CITY — An argument between Salt Lake City and a Jordan River activist over a public records request is headed for district court.

At issue is the request for a fee waiver by Jeff Salt of the Jordan River Restoration Network that was denied by the city but approved by both the Salt Lake City Appeals Board and the State Records Committee.

Salt wants to know more about the city's work on the plan to put a large-scale sports complex adjacent to the river near 2200 North and filed an extensive request for records related to the project. The lion's share of funding for the 160-acre project, which will include 13 soccer fields and two baseball diamonds, will come from the city via a $15.3 million bond measure approved by voters in 2003, with another $7.5 million from Real Salt Lake.

The location of the complex and how much analysis went into choosing it is at the crux of Salt's information request.

"We think the public needs to know how the city arrived at this decision and what work was done in evaluating it," he said. "We believe the city's stance and (its) appeal to district court on our fee waiver request is because we're opposed to the sports complex."

City attorney Ed Rutan said the position the city has taken has nothing to do with Salt's opposition to the complex's location and everything to do with the time and labor involved in gathering the information.

"Here, we've got this overwhelming document request," Rutan said. "Tracking everything down involves 58 present and former city employees. … So far we've copied about 3,000 pages of documents. That is an incredibly time-intensive task for the city to perform."

To help offset the costs of that work, Rutan said the city requested a $200 deposit from Salt and acknowledged that fulfilling the entirety of the records request could run well past that figure.

Salt said that open-ended price tag was not an acceptable situation, and he maintains that his request serves as a tool for public education — one of the parameters used under the state Government Records Access and Management Act in determining whether a fee waiver is appropriate. Both the city and state agreed with Salt on that point.

The State Records Committee noted in its ruling that Salt "presented sufficient evidence to show that the records request primarily benefits the public rather than an individual."

In its appeal of that decision filed in 3rd District Court last week, the city maintains that the committee overstepped its authority in granting that waiver.