“I think the bill is disassembling,” Advertising Mail Marketing Association president Gene A. Del Polito said late last week after the House postal subcommittee approved controversial legislation overhauling the U.S. Postal Service. “There were a lot of ambitious efforts put into it, to recast the USPS, but given what’s going on, I don’t see it being actualized.”
After what insiders described as “a lot of arm twisting” by its chairman, Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), author of the Postal Modernization Act of 1999, the subcommittee sent the measure (HR-22) to the House Government Reform Committee for consideration.
Committee Chairman Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) has yet to set a date for that to happen.
Capitol Hill insiders and industry representatives said McHugh convinced Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH), to delay introducing an amendment to eliminate a controversial provision allowing the USPS to form a private law corporation to oversee its competitive products and services.
McHugh defended his bill and its private law corporation provision in a lengthy statement to the panel saying it makes it “entirely clear that this corporation is strictly a private corporation that obtains no advantages from its relationship with the USPS, and yet unlike a private corporation, will be subject to oversight and remedy violations of a multitude of restrictions through PRC review and annually on complaint.”
Stating that the private law corporation will enhance the postal service’s value and improve its balance sheet, McHugh added that if it not successful “it will be allowed to fail like any other private company.”
McHugh did, however, accept an amendment proposed by Rep. Major Owens (D-NY), that would have someone to represent “the nation’s urban interests” on the postal service’s board. The term “urban interests” was not defined.
LaTourette plans to introduce the amendment when the full committee eventually considers the bill, while Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) reportedly plans to offer an amendment that would require more minorities in key postal management positions.
Meantime time Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the committee’s ranking minority member, is reported to be planning to introduce his own postal reform bill that gives the USPS slightly more flexibility in pricing and increases the Postal Rate Commission’s authority over the postal service, but without the private law corporation.
Neal Denton, Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers executive director, indirectly agreed saying “there seems to be five or six components of the bill that everyone seems to be comfortable with, but there are four or five parts that are very controversial that will be very challenging to get the full committee to agree upon.”
He predicted that “someone will take a handful of the acceptable provisions of McHugh’s bill and try to carve out a substantial postal reform bill that is acceptable to everyone.”
Although pleased that the measure cleared the subcommittee, the Direct Marketing Association “is still interested in seeing some changes” relative to rates, competitive products and services, performance, accountability and the PRC’s expanded authority over the USPS, according to Richard Barton, senior vice president, Congressional matters.
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