PROVIDENCE — In a legal tangle that pits Rhode Island’s top Democratic lawmakers against their Republican counterparts, a Superior Court judge yesterday weighed whether dishing out legislative grants to Little League organizations, fire districts and food pantries violates state law.

For decades, the Democratic General Assembly leaders have disbursed small grants, usually $5,000 or less, to community organizations each year on local legislators’ behalf.

Republican minority leaders took aim at that controversial practice yesterday, charging it violates the state Constitution by failing to identify the chosen recipients during the budget approval process.

“I’m asking the court to say this is wrong under the Constitution,” House Minority Whip Nicholas Gorham, R-Coventry, said. He asked Judge Patricia Hurst to end the practice.

Lawyer Max Wistow countered those arguments for state Democratic leaders, imploring Hurst to dismiss the case because, he said, taxpayers are not empowered to bring suit against the state under Rhode Island law unless “a very significant public interest” is at stake.

In addition, Wistow argued the case was moot because the Republicans based the suit on a state budget no longer in effect.

Republican leaders have long portrayed the legislative grant process as secretive and open to perceptions of impropriety. In June, they filed suit, arguing the grant system, expected to cost taxpayers $2.3 million this year, violates a section of the state Constitution requiring full disclosure and deliberation of any budget appropriation for “local and private causes.”

The Republicans brought the suit, Gorham said, as a last resort after House Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick, refused to disclose the grants in the state budget, instead lumping them in with the legislature’s annual appropriation of $35.6 million.

Gorham, who says he volunteered his services with Newport Rep. Steven Coaty, asked Hurst yesterday to rule outright in the Republicans’ favor as House Minority Robert Watson, of East Greenwich, and Scituate Rep. Carol A. Mumford looked on.

Hurst said she would issue a ruling at a later date on that motion and the Democrats’ move to dismiss.

But first she peppered Gorham with questions throughout almost two hours of arguments. She described the budget process as long and multilayered, commenting that Gorham had not demonstrated that lawmakers did not know what grants they were voting on when they approved the budget. “You’re asking me to assume … the legislators were acting in the dark,” she said.

“Call it anything you want but the Constitution says you have to know what you’re voting on,” Gorham said.

The judge asked why Governor Carcieri, who approves the budget and is the party leader, didn’t seek a legal opinion.

And she questioned whether the grant recipients would have to reimburse funds should the Republicans prevail in their suit. Gorham replied they would not.

Wistow noted that Gorham and four other Republicans bringing the suit had introduced the budget the suit is based on, prompting the judge to say that fact was not lost on her.

He challenged Hurst’s jurisdiction in the case, asserting that only the state Supreme Court can issue advisory opinions.

Under the General Assembly’s annual legislative grant process, lawmakers request money on behalf of local organizations. The House speaker and Senate president have sole discretion to approve or deny the request. If approved, a formal application is sent to the organization. A check typically arrives about a month after the forms are returned.

kmulvane@projo.com