With just a week until Miami City Commissioners again consider a plan to finance and construct a $515 million ballpark for the Marlins, two Miami activists have filed a lawsuit to stop the project.

Graciela Solares, a member of the Miami Roads Neighborhood Civic Association, and Elvis Cruz, a member of the Morningside Civic Association, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Miami and Miami-Dade County alleging the two governments negotiated the ballpark deal behind closed doors in violation of Florida’s public records law.

The suit, filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, seeks to void last year’s Baseball Stadium Agreement – the document that set in motion plans for the 37,000-seat retractable roof ballpark at the former site of the Orange Bowl – and halt any further negotiations unless they are held in public. The suit states that if the Miami City Commission and the county commission approve five new agreements that spell out precisely how to pay for and build the venue – those, too, would need to be voided. The city commission is scheduled on March 4 to consider five agreements; the county commission is to consider them March 9.

“The only thing they can do is, in a sense, start all over again,” said Linda Carroll, a Miami attorney representing Solares and Cruz.

Carroll said the public doesn’t have a right to interfere with negotiations, but must be allowed to watch them. Otherwise, she said, when it is the public’s time to comment, it can’t make informed observations since it doesn’t know what was considered.

A county spokeswoman said the county attorney’s office was reviewing the suit and had no comment. A city spokeswoman could not be reached late Wednesday. The Marlins were not named in the suit.

In his lawsuit filed last year, auto dealer Norman Braman also questioned the ballpark deal being negotiated in violation of the state’s Sunshine law. Braman’s suit accused County Manager George Burgess of negotiating the stadium deal on behalf of the county in private. The claim was one of the first dismissed in the case.

Carroll said the cases differ and the new lawsuit points out the public knows even more private meetings occurred in recesses during the city commission’s Feb. 13 meeting to consider the five agreements.

“The Chairman of the Commission declared recesses during the Commission meeting so that members of the negotiating teams of the City, the County and the Marlins could meet and confer,” the suit states. “The negotiators left the Commission chamber for the second floor (where the offices of the City’s Mayor and Manager are located). No one in the public knows what happened: all negotiations at that time were closed to the public.”

Knowing Braman’s public records law claims were dismissed last year, it’s possible the votes go on as planned. But it’s also possible Carroll files an injunction seeking to stop the votes from going forward.

As always, stay tuned.