LEGISLATIVE ISSUES
NEW YORK STATE BRANCH
NATIONAL LEAGUE OF POSTMASTERS
National League of Postmasters
5904 Richmond Highway Suite 500, Alexandria, VA 22303-1864
703-329-4550 703-329-0466 (f)
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The following is an excerpt from an email sent out by National President Charley Mapa
Dear Leaguers, May 28, 2010
Legislation.
There are some tremendously important legislative issues coming up that have not yet reached the stage of being introduced as bills, but are nonetheless, receiving plenty of attention in various places in Washington DC. On the one hand, some of the legislative movement is promising in what is being considered, while, on the other hand, there are some rather disturbing developments afoot. First of all, there appears to be a genuine desire amongst most of the congressmen the League has been in contact with to find some permanent relief for the Postal Service’s obligation to prefund future retirees’ health benefits. As you know, that obligation costs the Postal Service about $4.5 billion a year, and, of course, that is not chump change. This obligation puts the Postal Service in a financial stranglehold that it has, thus far, been unable to break. That being said, no permanent solution has yet been put into any sort of bill, and we may again find ourselves scrambling at the end of the fiscal year to find a money bandage to staunch the bleeding. The League is working with all of the unions and management associations in an effort to come up with a solution to this huge problem.
One potential source for a solution is still out there and that, of course, is the possibility that, for years, the Postal Service has been overfunding Civil Service Retirement. The Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General ran the numbers and contends that the Postal Service has overfunded by about $75 billion dollars. If the OIG’s numbers are correct, it seems logical and right for the Postal Service to be able to access this overpayment to fund its obligation to pay for its future and current retirees’ health benefits.
As you all know, PMG Potter has been pushing hard for more than a year to get Congress to allow the Postal Service to go from six day delivery to five day delivery. While some postal leaders talk as if this move is a done deal, the mood in congress is not so optimistic. The Postal Service has done a bang-up job in spinning a scenario in which it claims that if we don’t go to five day delivery, we will have a deficit of $238 billion by the year 2020. Many have questioned that colossal number and are unconvinced that it is a true representation of what will really happen. Some of the doubters are in Congress and are adamantly opposed to the move to 5 day delivery.
Closing Post Offices
One particularly disturbing development is the thought that the Postal Service is overstaffed by 30%. That is a fascinating idea as almost universally, Postmasters are running offices that are seriously understaffed. Certainly, there are still plants out there that have hundreds of extra employees, but, by and large, associate offices do not have that luxury. Along with the thought that we are overstaffed by 30%, is the concept that we have 30% too many post offices. While it is an established fact that closing the 10,000 smallest post offices would save only about a half of one percent of the Postal Service’s operating budget, the thought persists that we need to close these offices because they are unprofitable. There are congressmen who favor forming a commission to look at large numbers of post offices for closure, much in the same way that the government closed many military bases a couple of decades ago. The fact is, most of these offices, along with thousands of their larger cousins, have never been profitable. The smaller communities that these offices represent have already been marginalized by modern society; any move by Congress or the Postal Service to close rural post offices will further erode the quality of rural life. Fortunately, the League has likely found an ally in Congress in the Congressional Rural Caucus, headed up by Nebraska Republican, Adrian Smith. It is our hope that the Caucus will aid us in our fight to protect America’s rural post offices. The League will keep you up-to-date with changing developments in postal legislation.
Charley Mapa
President
National League of Postmasters
6/25/2010
Customer and Employee Views on the Future of the U.S. Postal Service
Click here to read testimony from Charley Mapa and others at the hearing of Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security.
