Opinion ID: 490514
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: inadequate explanation of decision

Text: 10 In removing the conditions from the September 29, 1983, approval letter, the Department in 1984 told the Governor that [y]our letter and other information received since September 1983 have provided the necessary clarification of the degree of local support for an unconditional withdrawal of I-420 funds. J.A. at 125. Yet, it is undisputed that nothing had changed in the intervening year: Atlanta still supported the withdrawal only if no money went to build Georgia 400; the other decisionmakers (the Governor, DeKalb County, Atlanta Regional Commission) still supported an unconditional withdrawal of funds. Thus, the problem that the Department was grappling with in 1983--the opposition of one of only two local governments concerned--had not gone away by 1984. Without ever explaining why a problem had miraculously become a nonproblem, the Department gave the go-ahead for the withdrawal and substitution of funds, including money for Georgia 400. 11 The Department may, of course, simply have been confused initially regarding the application of its substantial support standard to a situation with only two local governments, and subsequently may have resolved the issue in its own ranks by concluding that one out of two is enough when the Governor and the local officials (the Atlanta Regional Commission) also concur. But such an explanation is nowhere to be found in the record, and would therefore be purely a post hoc rationalization, placing the Department's decision in the best light, but not necessarily in an accurate light. Without any verification, it is equally possible to speculate that the Department may continue to believe that substantial support cannot exist when one of two local governments strongly objects, but has succumbed to lobbying pressure from the Governor and the law firm hired by the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. 6 While there is certainly nothing improper about applying or listening to such outside pressure, it nonetheless remains unclear on this record whether in this case the Department actually concluded that substantial support existed and therefore deferred to the Governor as a matter of statutory interpretation, or whether it merely acceded to his request without deciding the difficult question of whether one out of two is the equivalent of substantial support. 12 Some credible explanation is necessary for what happened here. For there is certainly a strong argument that if the major local government involved in an urban highway project--the relevant city--objects to an unconditional withdrawal, then substantial support of the local governments concerned cannot be said to exist. The Department should have addressed this problem during its decisionmaking process. Only a remand now for a belated explanation of the Department's perplexing behavior can flush out its decisionmaking process so as to permit judicial review of whether it acted according to law.