Those who regularly read this column know I’ve devoted a number of my commentaries to postal reform, and for good reason: There’s a lot riding on it. And yes, without long-term structural change, the postal system we know today simply won’t be sustained beyond this decade.
Reform is necessary and most definitely would be helpful, but we can’t forget there are other alternatives that desperately need to be explored if our goal is a truly re-engineered postal structure.
There’s a great deal that can be done today without a new postal law. For instance, there is absolutely nothing preventing the U.S. Postal Service and its employees from working out some of the many differences that have made their relationship anything but smooth. Similarly, there is much the USPS and the Postal Rate Commission can do (within the context of current law) to address many of the complaints that mailers and the President’s Commission have noted about rates and classification.
The USPS is blessed with a postmaster general who knows where his agency’s skeletons are buried. He’s using his intimate knowledge of postal operations to ferret out some of the cost and waste that’s been a plague to business mailers. Thus far he’s enjoyed success, and he’s expressed confidence that there’s still more cost-cutting he can do.
But that alone won’t solve the postal service’s long-term fiscal challenges, and there’s much that can and must be done to increase mail’s value and utility for companies that use it. For far too long, postal executives have been more willing to tell you what they believe the USPS can’t do, rather than what it can, to satisfy businesses’ changing needs. Yet there’s nothing in current law that prohibits postal managers from engaging in a little creative thinking.
So, while we all should continue to work as hard as we can for reform, let’s not use the fact that it may not happen tomorrow as an excuse for not doing the things we have the power and capability to do today.
GENE A. DEL POLITO is president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) in Arlington, VA.
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