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Federal Daily News

Lawmaker wants USPS revenue study made public

A Virginia congressman is asking the Postal Regulatory Commission to release a study that reveals the impact of mail service cuts and downsizing efforts on U.S. Postal Service revenue.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D) filed the motion on March 13, noting that USPS has asked the PRC “to keep the study secret.” The motion argues that making that information public is particularly relevant in light of USPS plans to close facilities and legislation pending in Congress to restructure the Postal Service.

“It has come to my attention that the Postal Service doesn’t want the public to see the results of this study,” Connolly said in a statement. “In a competitive marketplace, you lose customers and revenue when you raise prices and reduce services. That simple fact has been missing from the debate.”

According to a release from Connolly’s office, the study “quantified the impact on revenue of reducing mail service from six to five days, eliminating next-day mail service, closing mail processing facilities, and closing thousands of Post Offices,” and may also have examined the effect of stamp price increases.

“It is fundamentally dishonest to tout the cost-saving impacts of your proposals, while ignoring the reality that those same proposals could lead to self-reinforcing declines in revenue,” Connolly stated. “This report should be made public so we can all see the complete picture and make informed decisions about the future business model of the United States Postal Service.”

In the motion, Connolly argues that the Postal Service is unlikely to be suffer commercial injury by revealing the results of the study, and maintains that the public has a right to know how the closures will affect Americans’ health, safety and quality of life in areas such as mail-order pharmaceutical delivery, a fast- growing business that affects the increasing senior population.

Connolly has sponsored his own bill, H.R. 1262, that would open the way for USPS to collocate its outlets with private facilities and state and local governments, and expand its range of products and services.


 

Reader comments

Thu, Mar 15, 2012 CL Jones 26508

I worked for the postal service for 25 years in several capacities, from letter carrier to Postmaster(OIC), and in training. The organization is top heavy, and 'tests' itself to reveal favorable reults to the public. It never reveals the whole story. ie mail volumn down, they neglect to say they ONLY measure 1st class mail. The volumn for catalogs and advertizing mail is way up. Why don't they charge more for this mail? Their argument that the mailers will not mail with us is unfounded. Who else is going to deliver that mail to the customers? Try sending something with UPS or Fed Ex for .45. Also UPS and Fed Ex deliver tractor trailer loads of packages to our docks for us to deliver after they have collected the money. I know there was a trade off for space on planes etc, but we're being painted as the bad carrier. Needs acountability and strong management. Not little Gods in their office. All offices are not created equal, there should be flexibility. We were constantly required to measure, measure, measure. They knew what came in the doors so that should be sufficient. The numbers collected where never used for any benefit that we coould see.

Wed, Mar 14, 2012

Being a former postal worker myself, I suspect what the USPS leadership really wants is to keep this study out of the hands of the labor unions. There is probably stuff in there that the unions will find useful during the next round of contract negotiations.

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