Court Rules in Favor of Media in Portantino Open Records Case

A Sacramento County judge tentatively ruled in favor of the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee in an open records lawsuit regarding office budget information in the California Legislature.

At the heart of the case was a dispute between Altadena's representative, Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada Flintridge, who asked for information on office budgets after Democratic leadership officials accused him of over-spending his office budget and threatened to furlough his staff.

Portantino filed an open records request, and was followed in that pursuit by the Times and the Bee, which later filed a joint lawsuit after the Legislature denied their public records requests, and argued that publicly-elected officials office budget records should not be disclosed to the public.

In his ruling, Judge Timothy Frawley subtly chided the representatives of the California Assembly for how they attempted to use provisions of the Open Records Act to argue that legislatior's office budgets are not open records:

In a somewhat ironic twist, the Assembly argues that the "Open Records Act" should be given a narrow interpretation that restricts the public's right to inspect legislative records.  Further, the Assembly argues that the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers prohibits this court from enforcing any other interpretation.  Both arguments lack merit.

Portantino quickly reacted to the news of the ruling.

"I am ecstatic that the court has given a sound decision that will benefit democracy and the taxpayers of California," wrote Portantino in a press release. "Hopefully, now decisions can be made on the merits of the policy and not on the ability of leaders to use the budget to force votes."

The Assembly's lawyers advanced several arguments on why the budget information should be kept secret, including the following two:

1) That the information was exempt because it was "correspondence" between Assembly members.  The court rejected that, with Frawley suggesting it would "allow any Assembly member or staff to shield any record in his possession simply by 'passing' it to any other member or staff person."

2)  That is is exempt because the budgets are still in the "deliberative process" which shields the government from releasing records on policy that is still being decided.  The Assembly's lawyers argued that because the budgets are amended throughout the year, they are still in the deliberative process, an argument the court also rejected.