Postal Reform Bill Not Ready to Deliver

After watching legislation die in the election-shortened Congress last year, a bipartisan group of members have introduced the Postal Service Reform Act of 2017 in the first month of the new Congress.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, introduced the legislation along with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), ranking member of the committee, and Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Gerry Connolly (D-VA), and Stephen Lynch (D-MA). Lynch is the son of a postman.

“Postal reform in a bipartisan way that gets to the president’s desk is something that is certainly a goal for this committee,” Chaffetz said.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), who shepherded postal legislation in the Senate during the last Congress, said he was “encouraged” by reports the House “intended to move postal reform … rapidly.”

It’s probably better for taxpayers and mail customers if the legislation does not move too rapidly because the early iteration would not address the problems that have caused the Postal Service to lose $5.6 billion in the last year and $60 billion in the last 10.

The Postal Service’s financial problems stem in part from bad business decisions and in part on requirements imposed by Congress in the last round of postal reform that USPS prefund pensions and benefits for its 600,000 employees.

The Postal Service failed to make the $5.8 billion prefunding payment, leaving it nearly $40 billion behind in contributions to the fund – on top of a $15 billion line of credit from the federal government it already had used to prefund benefits.

Instead of forcing the Postal Service to rethink a business model that has it deeply invested in a number of unprofitable lines, Congress wants to make the benefits problem go away. The legislation proposed by Chaffetz would establish separate plans for postal employees within the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the same program Congress itself uses.

Similarly, eligible postal retirees, employees and their families would be re-enrolled automatically in Medicare Part A and Part B. This means the Postal Service, which purports to operate as an independent federal entity, will have its benefits paid for by the federal government.

This wipes out a quarter of the Postal Service’s costs, which gives it a huge leg up on private-sector competitors.

The legislation also calls for a one-cent rate hike on first-class mail, which is already its most profitable service, and a full review of costs for its market-dominant products by Jan. 1, 2018.

It would shrink the Postal Board of Governors from nine members to seven – five appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate and the Postmaster General and Deputy Postmaster General. This would reduce the influence of electorally accountable presidential appointees to the board in favor of unelected bureaucrats.

The legislation would push the country toward centralized or cluster box delivery. It would require conversion if 40 percent of residents agree and would mandate incremental change to centralized delivery for all business addresses. The legislation would do so without mandating any meaningful changes to USPS operations to improve upon its continuously deteriorating service performance for its core letter mail products.

Additionally, the legislation calls for an annual report to the Postal Rate Commission on the costs, revenues, rates and quality of service for each non-postal service agreement. The Postal Rate Commission then would have to determine whether prices charged for non-postal products truly reflected the Postal Service’s costs, and contracts that don’t pay for themselves could be reduced, redirected or eliminated altogether.

The highly controversial move of closing local post offices also will be addressed in the legislation. Postal Service would consider factors such as distance to the next post office, characteristics of that other location, including weather and terrain, and how much broadband is available in the area. Further, the time for the Postal Rate Commission to review the Postal Service’s decision to close a post office would be reduced from 120 days to 60.

The proposal also calls for creation of a Chief Innovation Officer position to manage development and implementation of innovative postal products and services, but it does not clarify the level of scrutiny and cost analysis practices needed to understand how new ventures affect the bottom line. This role also consolidates various inspectors general with oversight on the Postal Service into a new Inspector General for the Postal Community.

The new law would provide some employees with access to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which is supposed to protect whistleblowers.

There are things to like in the legislation, but the positives are far outweighed by concerns and remaining unknowns. The Postal Service needs to stop delivering groceries in San Francisco and fish in New York. It needs to stop losing money on poorly thought out Negotiated Service Agreements with Amazon and others. And it needs to address its very real pension obligations in a way that doesn’t threaten to put American taxpayers on the hook.

It’s doable, but Congress definitely should take time to get this right. It is not there yet.

Exactly!! Lots of generalities being thrown around here! Are there bad employees at the USPS? Sure. Just like everywhere. Is it heavily burdened with management who never touch a piece of mail? Absolutely. How many of you have a gps chip tracking you all day long on your job? With FedExand UPS offloading more and more of their “ last mile” deliveries to the USPS, the USPS now deliver more packages every day than those two combined. New employee turnover is close to 50%. You can’t find anyone who wants to be a carrier. They are worked to death and treated like sh$t. It’s an organization that operates like a private business but managed by government blowhards. Privatize it totally, not just half assed!!

I live in a rural area, small village, and my closest neighbor works at the post office which is only 1/4 mile away.
She and the rest of the people at the post office are great!
My carrier still carries stamps with him. If I don’t have a stamp and don’t feel like going to the PO, I either leave the change for a stamp in a jar lid with the letter or tape a dollar bill to it. Problem solved, letter mailed.

I once ordered an electrical part for a home appliance. Wasn’t home the day it was delivered. The box was too big to put in the mail box and it was raining so the carrier left it propped against my side door inside my enclosed porch.
Good people.

Rural and city people have different needs and there are different solutions to meet those needs.
A one size fits all approach won’t satisfy anyone.

Yep.
They don’t need to “discontinue Saturday delivery”.
They need to allocate every delivery route to “Group A” or “Group B”.
Group A routes get delivery Monday/Wednesday/Friday.
Group B routes get delivery Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday.
Lay-off half of all employees at all levels of management involved in the delivery of mail; that cuts the payroll costs of that segment in half.
It also makes the existing fleet of delivery vehicles last twice as long.
The only exception to the every-other-day policy would be business customers that get enough mail that it would require an extra vehicle trip to deliver it.

Decent idea, but really only a temporary solution. Back in the day, governmental post made sense as government business was the main (and sometimes only) way some towns had relations outside of themselves. Postal services are essential to society, but weren't practical for a private venture.
Nowadays, however, our world is so interconnected, and travel is so easy, that the main needs for the government having a post office is gone. Constitution needs to be amended to limit gov post to military bases and some essential gov business. Otherwise USPS needs to just go away.

postal workers near me move at a snails pace and don’t care how long the line is waiting. they take breaks at the busiest times and other unpopular times i’ve been in they have 2-3 workers at the counter spots with nothing to do. VERY mismanaged.

I actually worked for the postal service less than a week in 1990(ish). they had me sorting mail in back room and I took it seriously until a certain time came and they told me to just pile it all back in the big rolling bin and it would get sorted a automated mail facility. They had me do the same the next day, I wanted a job that actually was part of accomplishing some thing so I found work elsewhere.

The clerk was combative.

Full disclosure - 45 years ago, I spent some time working as a window clerk so know what I am seeing at the counter.

Sometimes I see a well-oiled machine. Clerks in the back, doing other tasks, but quick to come up if the line gets long. Clerks looking ahead at the line, noticing what is in customers hands and asking informed questions, like, "Are you picking up, let me have that slip while I go back, and I will get both on one trip. Are you just dropping off, just set it her and I will get to it. The line starts moving.

But when I visit post offices in the inner-city, I see angry employees taking it out on the customers.

Here they have a line of 40 people and just watching them, they start to go into slow motion. They are too young to have seen Stepin' Fetch It on the old movies, but you would think they were performing a character study. What really galls me is when another employee, no doubt on the clock, comes up to the front counter and starts to visit with a co-worker, right in front of all the customers. Everyone sees it, it is truly "In Your Face". Those particular offices are out of control. But when I see a good one, I am truly appreciative.

The USPS can not even deliver their so called Priority mail on time.

I could write a book, lol. I bounced around, doing odd postal jobs while going to college. One morning, we had just finished sorting the letter mail for the letter carriers to come get, and the 7:30 mail truck brought another sack of letter mail from the big office. I started to jump on it, knowing we could knock it out before the carriers came for their last pull and could get that mail delivered today.

The Postmaster himself stepped in and said that mail would wait for the next day, as he had no obligation to deliver it until tomorrow.

This is the same Postmaster, who at Christmas time gave each of us a bright shiny dime to get a hot coffee from the vending machine. A dime, wow, was I ever impressed.

All I know is that every January the USPS jacks up International rates to try to keep down domestic rates. It is really hurting my mail order business. Costs $19.25 to mail a 9oz package to Europe now and that is with eBay discounted rates. $15 bucks to just add registered service. Italy used to be a decent percentage of my business now next to nothing as Postage and Registered service increases (Italian Postal Workers are kleptomaniacs hence the need for the security of registered package) are $28.50 for a package under 8oz. and over $37 for a package 8.1oz. to 2 lbs.

Of course FedEx and UPS options are a non starter. No idea how they have any international business with their rates.

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