City of Los Angeles v. Adams, 75-1965
| Decision Date | 30 March 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 75-1965,75-1965 |
| Citation | 181 U.S. App. D.C. 163,556 F.2d 40 |
| Parties | CITY OF LOS ANGELES, a Municipal Corporation v. Brock ADAMS, as Secretary of Transportation of the United States, et al., Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
City of Los Angeles filed an action to compel the FAA to make a grant to reimburse it for $9.6 million of expenses incurred in expansion of its airport. The FAA acknowledged that the project was acceptable but denied the grant on the ground that the limited funds available to FAA required a priority system, and other projects with higher priority would exhaust available funds. On appeal from a district court judgment granting this relief, held :
1. The Airport and Airway Development Act of 1970 provided funds for airport development, 49 U.S.C. § 1714. Congress stressed the need for commitment of minimum sums for airports to facilitate long-term planning. As amended, the law provides for the availability of $1.46 billion in the first five years of the program. Plaintiff's action claims entitlement to its allocated share of this sum.
2. Subsequent appropriation statutes operated to limit total grants made in each year. This is discerned to be the intent of the annual provisions that the appropriated funds shall not be "available for administrative expenses in connection with commitments for grants-in-aid for airport development" exceeding the maximum amount. The court must respect the intention of Congress even though an appropriation measure has been used as a vehicle to amend a general statute. This was not an executive impoundment of a legislative appropriation, but a reduction by Congress itself.
3. However, the necessity of reducing amounts actually committed as grants does not authorize the FAA to depart from the provisions of § 15(a)(1) of the 1970 Act dealing with apportionment of funds to airports. This required that funds be apportioned: 1/3 to the states in proportion to area and population; 1/3 to airports in proportion to passengers served (enplanement formula); and only 1/3 at the discretion of FAA (discretionary fund). The FAA has in effect used the variance between the 1970 act and subsequent appropriations measures as to total amounts available, to permit the FAA to disburse the lesser amounts by exercising discretion as to which projects further the public interest.
4. Compliance with its statutory mandate requires the agency to effectuate the original statutory scheme as much as possible, by preserving the allocation formula while respecting the total monetary restraints of the appropriations measures. The case is remanded for the district court to ascertain, with the advice of the Comptroller General, the reduced amount plaintiff would have received if the FAA had applied a pro rata reduction for fiscal year 1975 and to order that amount to be granted by the FAA.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (D.C. Civil 75-0679).
David M. Cohen, Atty., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., with whom Rex E. Lee Asst. Atty. Gen., Earl J. Silbert, U.S. Atty., and Robert E. Kopp, Atty., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., were on the brief, for appellants. Morton Hollander, Atty., Dept. of Justice, Eric B. Marcy, Asst. U.S. Atty., Washington, D.C., also entered appearances for appellants.
Ronald J. Einboden, Deputy City Atty., Los Angeles, Cal., with whom Lawrence M. Nagin, Sp. Counsel to the City Atty., Los Angeles, Cal., was on the brief, for appellee.
Before WRIGHT, TAMM and LEVENTHAL, Circuit Judges.
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge LEVENTHAL.
This case arises from tension between substantive legislation and the corresponding appropriations. The district court granted relief to the City of Los Angeles based on its conclusion that the city had a vested right to funds for the development of its airport, as allocated to it by the Airport and Airway Development Act of 1970, 49 U.S.C. §§ 1701 et seq. (the "Act"). This right was held to be firm in amount despite the fact that subsequent appropriations limited expenditures to less than that provided by the Act.
We have attentively examined the pertinent enactments and legislative history in order to discern Congress's intent. We conclude that the amount of dollars available for the airport development program was determined by the appropriations measures passed by Congress. However, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) went too far when it, in effect, used the discrepancy between the substantive provisions of the Act and the provisions of the appropriations laws as a hinge for enlarging its discretion to decide which projects to fund. The sound underlying doctrine calls for an intermesh of the measures that provides maximum possible respect for and application of both measures. We conclude that in this case the appropriations acts can be given full effect in limiting the amounts available, while the Act is given maximum effect, within the appropriations constraints, in dictating how the limited amounts should be allocated and administered.
On remand, the district court will compose a suitable decree to implement this opinion.
The City of Los Angeles owns and operates the Los Angeles International Airport. The City applied in October, 1974, to the FAA for a grant to reimburse it for part of a $21.4 million land acquisition for expansion of the Airport. It applied for $11.5 million under the provisions of the Act, but only claims $9.6 million as of right from its entitlements accrued in fiscal years (FY's) 1974 and 1975.
In March, 1975, the FAA informed the City that the grant would not be made, in spite of the acceptability of the project and the City's apportionment under the enplanement provisions of the Act (which will be discussed presently). This denial was based on the FAA's position that it was obliged to distribute less funds than apportioned by the Act, that it had instituted a priority system to choose which projects to fund, and that other projects with higher priority than Los Angeles's land acquisition would exhaust the available funds.
The City brought suit on May 1, 1975, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to compel execution by the FAA of a $9.6 million grant. On May 2, the district court granted a temporary restraining order that prohibited the FAA from granting the $9.6 million to anyone other than the plaintiff. This was followed by a preliminary injunction on May 14 and a memorandum opinion on June 23, finding Los Angeles entitled to the grant. City of Los Angeles v. Coleman, 397 F.Supp. 547 (D.D.C.1975). This was enforced in an order of June 26, 1975.
The Airport and Airway Development Act of 1970, 49 U.S.C. §§ 1701 et seq. provides for the formulation of a national airport system plan, § 1712, and for federal funding of airport development, § 1714, from a trust fund accumulated from air transportation use taxes, § 1742.
The amount available for airports was the subject of § 14(a) of the Act, 49 U.S.C. § 1714(a). 1 This authorized the Secretary of Transportation who has delegated his duties under the Act to the FAA to make grants of "not less than" $250 million in each of FY's 1971-75 for airports serving CAB certified carriers and certain general aviation airports, with $30 million for other airports. In 1973, these amounts were increased to $275 and $35 million, respectively, for FY's 1974-75.
Apportionment of funds for airports is governed, as to the larger airports, by § 15(a)(1) of the Act, codified as 49 U.S.C. § 1715(a)(1). 2 This subsection requires that the funds be apportioned: (1) one-third to the states in proportion to their area and population, (2) one-third to existing airports serving CAB certificated carriers in proportion to passengers served (the "enplanement formula"), and (3) one-third to be distributed at the discretion of the FAA (discretionary fund). Section 1715(a)(3) provides that amounts apportioned to "sponsors" (public airport authorities applying for airport development grants) under the enplanement formula are to be available for approved airport development projects for the year in which apportioned and two successive years. Any sums not obligated by grant at the expiration of that time are transferred to the discretionary fund.
Congress plainly intended mandatory apportionment of the amounts specified in § 1714(a) to airport sponsors according to the three-fold formula of § 1715(a). The Senate Report explained the policy behind this formula:
This apportionment formula will satisfy two important needs. First, it will assure that at least one-third of the total funds will be expended in the airport areas of the highest traffic density and where the need is greatest. Secondly, by apportioning at least one-third of the available funds to projects in the States using the "area/population" formula, projects in smaller States and those projects which are not of primary importance will not be neglected.
In addition, the Committee believes it important that the Secretary have at his discretion a significant portion of the allocated revenue in order to provide additional financial assistance to projects which have a high priority in the National Airport System Plan. The discretionary fund may be particularly useful in assisting development of new jetport facilities being planned in the high density hub areas in which a high initial investment is required.
S.Rep. No. 565, 91st Cong., 1st Sess. 28 (1969).
In addition to assuring return of one-third of the funds to their airports of origin to deal with current congestion, the Senate Report stresses the need for commitment of certain minimum sums to airport sponsors to facilitate long term planning. Id. at 22, 25:
Second, the program, which has been subject to annual...
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