A response by National Academy of Public Administration fellow Murray Comarow to American Interest magazine on its article entitled: "Going Postal: The Imminent Death of the U.S. Postal Service?" The article was written by someone under the nom de plume Georg Jensen.

To:   The American Interest Magazine

Subject:   Going Postal:   The Imminent Death of the U.S. Postal Service?

 

          This article in the May-June issue of The American Interest is said to be written by a pseudonymous Georg Jensen, described as a Danish “public policy analyst.”  Jensen is a good, if somewhat overwrought, writer.  In fact, his use of Americanisms (“barn-side idea,” “racking up”) raises the question of whether he is who he says he is.  Besides, why hide behind a pseudonym?  There have been no recent sightings of postal board chairman Carolyn Gallagher or Postmaster General Potter hunting down and shooting their critics.

          With some misgivings then, I will take the article at face value.  Parts of Jensen’s article are plausible.  On the whole, however, it is a farrago of inaccuracies and naked assertions.  I will deal with a few of them.

          Georg Jensen:  The USPS and General Motors “are currently generating multibillion dollar annual losses.”

          MC:  The USPS was saddled by Congress in the December 2006 Act with about $5.6 billion a year for ten years to fund health benefits for future retirees.  No other government agency is similarly afflicted.  If Congress had not insisted on this unprecedented provision, USPS would have shown a good profit last  year.

          GJ:   USPS “is pushing products fewer people want.”

          MC: Such as?  Where is the evidence?  Surveys by outside firms reveal a high level of public trust and customer satisfaction.

          GJ: USPS leaders are “burdening themselves with bloated payrolls . . . and contending with some of the largest and most powerful labor unions on earth.”

          MC: The words “burdening themselves” are misleading.  The postal laws give postal unions alone a unique bargaining chip, the right to negotiate wages.  In the event of an impasse, an arbitrator decides how much postal employees should make.

          GJ: USPS leaders have “burdened themselves . . . with huge fixed-cost infrastructures . . .”

          MC: It is true that many plants have become excess as machinery became more efficient.  Efforts to close these facilities (and post offices) run into a firestorm of union/Congress objections.  Still, I believe USPS could take a tougher stance.  Half a pont for GJ.

          GJ: President Nixon’s administration “reorganized the Post Office Department in 1970 in response to a debilitating strike by postal workers.”

          MC: This urban myth has gained credibility through sheer repetition, as one writer after another accepts the assertion.  The unlawful strike was broken by Nixon’s threat to call out the troops.  George Meany, who ran the AFL/CIO said, “This is the end of postal reform.”  The real story is complex.

          GJ: The 1970 reform act “called for a Postal Rate Commission . . . the idea being that there needed to be some check on those who control the USPS’s financial operations.”

          MC: The original Nixon-backed proposal gave the Board of Governors full authority to direct the USPS.  There was no PRC in the administration’s bill, which passed in the House.  Mailers prevailed on the Senate to add this provision, which undermines the Board’s authority.

          GJ: The USPS “is neither a Federal agency nor exactly a private corporation.”

          MC: The USPS is certainly a federal agency, a type called a government corporation.  The Congressional Research Service lists eighteen such agencies.  They perform commercial-type functions and are supported by customer revenues, not by taxpayers.   None of them, other than the USPS, has anything like five presidential appointees (read PRC) supervising nine presidential appointees (read USPS), a patently absurd situation.

          GJ: “USPS subsidizes U.S. businesses by means of the fees it collects from ordinary postal customers.”

          MC: Except for its ability to raise rates within inflationary limits, USPS rates are monitored by the PRC.  I find GJ’s assertion indecipherable.

          GJ: Do taxpayers know “how much they subsidize the junk mail that annoys them daily.”

          MC: Two unsupported assertions in one sentence.  First, USPS is not subsidized by taxpayers.  Second, surveys demonstrate that most people like and use advertising mail or don’t object to it.  “Junk Mail” is a matter of survival to thousands of businesses.  (Disclosure: I am a consultant to a major mailer.)

          There are other mistakes.  USPS has about 700,000 employees, not 800,000.  It has received national recognition for its environmental programs.  Jack Potter did not “hail the PAEA as a victory.”  He and every member of the board signed a letter to Congress objecting to its enactment.  Comparing USPS to a “Ponzi scheme” reveals ignorance of how such a scheme works.  Potter never made “hallucinatory predictions that mail volumes will magically recover once the economy recovers.”  President Obama cannot “appoint a new Board of Governors.”  They serve fixed seven year terms and may be removed only for cause.

          Especially in the case of an anonymous essay, The American Interest would have done well to use fact-checkers, or have had GJ’s copy vetted.  Still, I agree with GJ that the business model should be altered, but not based on the Swiss model.  Switzerland is less than half the size of Indiana and has fewer people than Los Angeles County.  Management must have the tools and flexibility to manage; that should be the core organizing principle.  The corollary to that principle is freedom to experiment.  That means that mistakes are to be expected, not reflexively condemned.

          A sound business model would put the board in charge.  It is not.  Congress gives lip service to the notion of a businesslike operation.  The multiple constraints under which USPS operates, and irresponsible behavior by legislators,

make that impossible.

          In presenting the Department of Defense budget recently, Secretary Gates spoke over the heads of Congress to the American public.  He asked Congress to put aside their “parochial” concerns and make decisions based on the national interest, a brave statement.  It may not succeed, but it needed to be articulated and may have some effect.  USPS must make its case for businesslike, effective governance clear and forceful.

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Murray Comarow was executive Director of the President’s Commission on Postal Organization, and is a senior fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.  These views are his alone.