Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch sued the City of Cranston yesterday for “willfully and knowingly” violating the state’s public records law.

The complaint, filed in Superior Court, alleges the city dragged its feet for months before providing John Bina, a radio disk jockey, with records he requested.

Bina, now a candidate for City Council, asked for information on long-distance phone calls from City Hall and renovations to the mayor’s office, among other matters.

The delays came as another Cranston resident, Alex Hofstetter, waited months for the city to provide a list of municipal employees and their home towns.

Michael W. Field, a special assistant attorney general who is chief of the office’s open government unit, said the alleged violations of the Access to Public Records Act should be of broad concern.

“The hallmark of a democratic society is that people can be advised of, and informed of, what their government does,” he said.

City officials, who were still reviewing the Bina complaint yesterday afternoon, declined to discuss the specifics of the case.

But City Solicitor Vito L. Sciolto said he planned to defend against the lawsuit, which could result in a fine of up to $1,000.

Ernest J. Carlucci, director of administration for Mayor Michael T. Napolitano, a Democrat, said the city is committed to providing the public access to open records.

“Any document that the public has a right to, they should have an opportunity to see it,” he said.

The Cranston lawsuit is the fourth Lynch’s office has filed against a Rhode Island municipality or school district to enforce the state’s open government laws.

The other suits targeted Johnston, Barrington and the North Kingstown School Committee. All of those cases ended with settlements.

Bina, a Republican who made a failed bid for the Cranston City Council in 2006 and is running again this year, said he made the public records query in December 2007 to explore suspicions of mismanagement by the Napolitano administration.

State law requires a public body to respond within 10 days, but Bina never heard from the city. He said he filed the same request in February and got no response.

Only after Bina filed a complaint with the attorney general’s office in March did the city start to produce documents, sending out the first batch in April and more in May.

Bina’s records request touched on some touchy issues for the Napolitano administration.

The mayor, shortly after taking office, made headlines when he declared himself allergic to his offices and ordered the carpets torn up and the office walls scrubbed.

Republicans were pressing for information on the cost of renovations to the mayoral suite when Bina filed his query. (City records put the total at about $5,300.)

There were also rumors at the time that one of the mayor’s children had made some overseas telephone calls from city offices.

Napolitano confirmed yesterday that his daughter, now 13, phoned England several times in a misguided attempt to win a Cranston visit from Daniel Radcliffe, the British film actor who played Harry Potter.

Napolitano said he immediately covered the costs of his daughter’s phone calls upon learning of them.

Bina insisted the phone records request had nothing to do with the chatter about Napolitano’s daughter. Rather, he said, it was part of a broader effort to identify wasteful spending.

But Napolitano, upset that his daughter’s gaffe had become part of the political debate, called the request for the phone records “as dirty as it gets.”

Still, administration officials insisted yesterday that political considerations had nothing to do with delays in fulfilling requests by Bina or anyone else.

Sciolto, the city solicitor, suggested that “limited resources” in his office are the real culprit.

The city does have a history of failing to comply with the public records law.

The attorney general’s office cited the city for two violations in 2000.

And in February, the office admonished the city for delays in providing Hofstetter with a list of municipal employees and their home towns –– a list designed to ferret out how much of the city’s payroll was staying within Cranston’s borders.

Napolitano announced in May that he would not seek reelection to a second term this fall.

dscharfe@projo.com