The Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) is about to launch a three year, $10 million campaign for postal reform in an attempt to block the U.S. Postal Service's latest rate increase proposal.
Details are to be announced soon, according to Nina B. Link, MPA president, who said " It's intolerable."
"We are being told that we have to pay the price for the postal service's inefficiencies and out-of-control cost structure," she added.
Cathleen P. Black, who chairs the MPA Board of Directors, stated that "something is terribly wrong with a postal system that targets magazines, books and newspapers." She indirectly urged Congress to pass H.R. 22, the Postal Modernization Act, saying "it's time for fundamental [postal} reform."
The MPA's action, authorized by the MPA's Board of Directors late last week, comes just one week after the Direct Marketing Association's Board of Directors adopted a resolution of "no confidence" in the USPS because of a proposed January 2001 rate hike.
Unlike the DMA, which is urging the postal service's Board of Governors to order the rate case the USPS filed with the Postal Rate Commission (PRC) on Jan. 11 withdrawn, the MPA is asking other industry groups to join it in "a full-scale attack on the excessive rate proposal."
Hinting that the DMA might join with the MPA, Jerry Cerasale, the DMA's senior vice president, government affairs, said that although it hasn't discussed anything with the MPA, "the DMA has been directed by its board to fight this rate case and to go forward and seek any means to get it pulled back [withdrawn] and if not, to push to get the [rate-making] process changed."
The DMA is just one of approximately two dozen direct mail/marketing industry organizations and companies that have registered their opposition to the proposed rate hike with the PRC. The commission is expected to file its recommendations with postal governors on the proposed rate increase in early October and has tentatively scheduled the start of hearings in the rate case for April 5.
Legislation giving the USPS more freedom to set some of its rates while spinning off many of its competitive products and services into a private corporation was endorsed last year by the House postal subcommittee. The proposal has to be approved by the House Government Reform and Judiciary Committees before it can be voted on by the full House of Representatives.
While the proposal calls for an average increase of 6.4 percent, it would nonetheless raise Standard A (bulk advertising) Mail rates an average of 7.7 percent and the rates for other mail categories, including periodicals and publications, by 15 percent.
