Consortium of the Cities of Chino, Montclair, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, and Upland, California, Municipal Corporations v. Department of Labor

The cities of Chino, Montclair, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, and Upland, California (the consortium) petition to review a decision of the Secretary of Labor. The case arises under the Job Training Partnership Act, 29 U.S.C. § 1501 , et seq., a successor to the familiar CETA Program, 87 Stat. 839 .

The case is one of first impression and requires us to interpret a statute which on its face did not contemplate the problem before the court. Under § 1511 it is mandatory for the governor of a state to designate as “a service delivery area” any unit of general local government with a population of 200,000 or more. The statute does not say what will happen if two such units, overlapping each other, both request designation by the governor.

In this case, Governor George Deukmejian, acting on the advice of the appropriate training council, designated San Bernardino County as a service delivery area. In area the largest county in the country, San Ber nardino easily qualified as a unit of general local government with a population exceeding 200,000. But the consortium, composed of five cities within San Bernardino, also applied for designation. The training council recommended against that…