Mailer organizations gave a qualified thumbs-up yesterday to initial recommendations by the President's Commission on the Postal Service, particularly those that would replace the Board of Governors and Postal Rate Commission with new bodies.
"We've seen all this before in [Postmaster General] Jack Potter's Transformation Plan and in Rep. John McHugh's postal reform bills," said Neal Denton, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers. "Chapter One of this book was a good read but chapter two will be much thornier."
"We're pleased that the Commission has made some very thoughtful recommendations and we hope that this jump-starts the efforts or postal reform in Congress," added Direct Marketing Association spokesman Louis Mastria. "We're waiting for their final recommendations which should be coming in the next few weeks."
The commission held its second-to-last meeting in Washington, DC on Wednesday, and made some recommendations about what should be done with the USPS. It will make its final report to the President on July 31.
Overall, the commission said the USPS should remain a part of the government but should be given more flexibility to set prices.
"We're generally pleased with what the commission said about increases postal productivity and worksharing," said Bob McLean, executive director of the Mailers Council.
He also liked the commission's recommendation to abolish the existing USPS Board of Governors and replacing it with a board of directors like those of corporations. Unlike the BOG, which currently meets monthly this new board would meet only six times a year.
Echoing McLean’s sentiments, Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce said: "They can throw whole [Board of Governors] thing out and start from scratch."
One of the commission's key recommendations was to replace the current Postal Rate Commission with a new Postal Regulatory Board which would oversee rates and set a maximum rate for mail where the post office has a monopoly but allow the USPS to make its own prices below that ceiling.
The commission's other recommendations included:
*Restricting the postal service’s activities to collecting, sorting and delivering mail.
*Setting up a commission to recommend post office closings similar to the system used to close unnecessary military bases. Once closings are recommended, they would become final unless Congress disapproved of them in their entirety within 45 days.
The commission will meet again on next Wednesday at which time it will hear from its subcommittee on labor issues.
"This is likely to be very thorny since we're talking about 80% of the postal service's costs," remarked Denton.
After that, the panel's findings will go to President Bush and afterwards will probably go to Congress for possible legislative action.
None of the industry watchers dared guess what might happen at that point.
