Congress steps up backlash against US post office closures

Simmering discontent among US lawmakers concerning plans to close up to 3,653 post offices, and the resulting impact on universal service access, has stepped up a notch with the introduction yesterday of new bipartisan legislation into the US Senate. The so-called Protecting Rural Post Offices Act is sponsored by four Democrat Senators and two Republicans, between them representing the states of Oregon, Montana, Alaska and Kansas.

It echoes a bill put forward by Montana Senator Max Baucus this week, in attempting to ban the Postal Service from closing any post office if there is not another post office within 10 miles.

The 10-mile stipulation would be defined as a measurement along roads that are accessible year-round.

Senator Jeff Merkley, the Democrat Senator from Oregon who is one of the bill’s sponsors, said he was sponsoring the bill because 80% of the USPS list of post offices facing possible closure were more than 10 miles from the next nearest post office.

“That is unacceptable,” he said. “Rural post offices are the hub of community life, and an essential communications link.”

Underused

USPS, which has around 32,000 post offices in its network, hopes to close post offices if they are clearly underused. The list of those being reviewed at the moment include branches that bring in less than $27,500 a year in revenue, or operate for just two hours in a working day because of low demand.

Other post offices being reviewed include those bringing in less than $600,000 if they have at least five alternative access points within two miles.

The Senators believe USPS estimates that it will save $200m from closing the post offices on its list will mean it has “little or no benefit to their bottom line”. The USPS is currently making $10bn-a-year losses, although half of that is a Congressionally-mandated payment for the next 75 years of healthcare benefits for future retirees.

They believe the closing of rural post offices, and the subsequent affect on, for example, small businesses and senior citizens in rural areas, is not worth the savings that would be achieved.

Jerry Moran, the Republican from Kansas, said: “Because of local post offices, many small businesses can still keep their doors open in rural Kansas, and for many senior citizens who no longer have the ability to drive long distances, it is the local post office that gives them a personal and business connection to the rest of the world.

“The Postal Service should not be allowed to create one or more hurdles for the survival of rural America,” Moran added.

Village post offices

In rural areas, the Postal Service is promoting the concept of a “Village Post Office” to replace standalone post offices by partnering with local grocery stores or gas stations to provide postal services, in order to maintain local access. Village Post Office contracts already being awarded, with the first opening in Washington State. Expectations are that there could soon be 2,500 such outlets.

However, the idea does not appear to have caught on yet with Congressmen representing rural communities – more than 80 of whom wrote last month to the USPS’ regulator, the Postal Regulatory Commission, objecting to the post office closure plan.

Yesterday, the Senators backing the Protecting Rural Post Offices bill spoke about the sense of community identity that post offices represented in small rural towns, and that in some rural areas, people receive their groceries, medicines and other supplies from the post office.

“There’s no replacement in rural Alaska for the post office,” said Mark Begich, the Democrat representing Alaska.

Other Senators sponsoring the bill introduced yesterday include Lisa Murkowski, the Republican from Alaska, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and Montana Democrat Jon Tester, who has previously inserted similar measures into a financial appropriations bill currently being considered by the Senate.

Alaska

As well as closing post offices, USPS is already engaged in various plans to cut its operating costs by as much as $20bn a year by 2014, including plans to close up to 252 processing plants. However, it does need Congress to act to maximise its cost-cutting potential.

Among the myriad legislation introduced into the US Congress this year to rescue, fix or take control of the US Postal Service, one idea within the proposals from the majority Republicans on the House Oversight Committee has been to require Alaska to pay the $70m-a-year extra costs of providing its mail services.

In the last two weeks, this has been debated within Alaska’s local media, with Senator Murkowski mounting a campaign to fight attempts to threaten the so-called bypass mail system, in which USPS pays private contractors to fly mail to isolated communities.

“The concept of universal service is not a debating point; it’s federal law,” she said in columns within media including the Anchorage Daily News. “Mail is ‘a basic and fundamental service’ and Congress requires the Postal Service to ‘provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render Postal Services to all communities’ and must establish rates “‘on a fair and equitable basis’.

“This means the Postal Service must provide universal service at universal rates – and that has been the reasoning behind the USPS funding Alaska’s bypass mail,” Murkowski said.