The California Assembly's Democratic leadership has lost its effort to keep its office-spending records out of full public view. Its rationale for limiting public access was almost laughably absurd. But Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley betrayed no humor in dissecting the Assembly's sorry case, point by point.

"The court is persuaded that the strong public interest in disclosure outweighs any reason for keeping the records secret," Frawley wrote in favor of the lawsuit by the Sacramento Bee and Los Angeles Times to open the records.

As emphatic as Frawley's bottom line was his dismissal of the Democratic leadership's argument that many details of of the Assembly's $146.7 million annual budget were exempt from disclosure because they qualified under categories of preliminary drafts, "deliberative process" and correspondence to legislators and their staffs.

Not so, ruled the judge.

Preliminary drafts? Assembly: The budgets could still be modified at some point. Judge: Everything the Assembly does, "at least in theory," could be subject to revision. Such a sweeping interpretation of the exemption would eviscerate the open records law as it applies to the legislature.

Deliberative process? Assembly: The three branches of government have a qualified privilege to have the early phases of their deliberative process outside of public scrutiny. Judge: These budgets are not "predecisional, deliberative communications." They are approved spending plans.

Correspondence? Assembly: The budgets qualify as "legislative correspondence" because they are sent to members. Judge: Acceptance of such phony argument "would permit the Legislature to shield any document from public view simply by transmitting it to any Assembly member and/or his or her staff."

The regrettable part of this episode is that the resistance of the Assembly Democratic leadership resulted in public money being spent to make this ridiculous legal case against the public's interest. After the ruling, Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles, and Rules Chair Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, pointed out that they were following the same records practices as their predecessors for the past 30 years.

But it must be noted that the issue came to the fore when Pérez and Skinner threatened to cut off most office spending for Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, a San Gabriel Valley Democrat. He claimed it was in retaliation for defying the party line on key budget votes; the leadership said it was because he just happened to be the only Assembly member who was overspending the budget.

Portantino did not go down quietly. He challenged the Assembly leadership to open the books on staff spending.

Portantino successfully called the leadership's bluff. And now Californians will get a chance to see exactly who are the big spenders in the state Capitol.