Postal Relief Added to Government Stopgap Funding Bill
House and Senate lawmakers have included emergency financial relief for the Postal Service in a temporary government funding measure awaiting House and Senate approval. A vote in the House is slated for Friday, with the Senate to follow.
The postal financial relief provisions -- identical to H.R. 22, as approved by the House on September 15 -- are included in a continuing resolution to keep government operations funded through October 31. The continuing resolution is necessary to extend government funding while Congress completes work on its twelve annual government appropriations bills. In a complicated parliamentary maneuver, the continuing resolution has been added to the House-Senate conference report of the FY2010 Legislative Branch appropriations measure.
The Postal Service relief package contained in the CR reduces the size of the pre-funding payment the Postal Service must make to the Retiree Health Benefit Fund on September 30 from $5.4 billion to $1.4 billion. The reduction covers only the USPS pre-funding obligation for Fiscal Year 2009, which ends September 30. No taxpayer funds are involved, and the relief is not a "bailout." The Congressional Budget Office previously indicated that H.R. 22 will not have an affect on the Federal unified budget.
The savings will provide assistance to the Postal Service in dealing with significant financial problems brought about by the recession and electronic diversion. Future legislation addressing USPS retiree health benefit payments, as well as the underlying health benefit prefunding arrangement, is likely in the months ahead.
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PRC Reviews Station/Branch Closures at Bronx Hearing
NAPS encouraged the Postal Regulatory Commission on Wednesday to balance commercial and public interest factors in determining whether to validate the Postal Service's initiative to close and consolidate hundreds of post office stations and branches.
At a PRC field hearing on Wednesday in the Bronx, New York, NAPS Branch 459 President John Vincenzi told the PRC in testimony:
"The fundamental aim of my organization -- the National Association of Postal Supervisors, as a mangement association of employees of the Postal Service -- is to support the effective and efficient operation of the Postal Service. As such, we are conscious of the tremendous financial pressures the Postal Service faces. We are sensitve to the heightened need for the Postal Service to reduce its costs, while assuring universal service. This is not an easy task. It requires a balancing of commercial and public service factors. This means that the Postal Service must be guided not merely by how postal operations were conducted yesterday, but how they need to be conducted in financially responsible and public-minded ways today and tomorrow. Where the consolidation of postal facilities makes commercial sense, where service to the public will not be adversely affected, where major mailers will not be inconvenienced, and where negotiated agreements and statutory requirements have been satisfied, the Postal Service should be permitted to proceed in undertaking consolidations of its commercial retail network."
The PRC held Wednesday's field hearing in the Bronx, along with another hearing last week in Ohio, to assist in its review whether to validate the USPS effort to close hundreds of post office stations and branches, called the "Station and Branch Optimization and Consolidation Initiative." The latest list of post office stations and branches under review is here.