United States Postal Service looks to get lean

To anyone stringing together the words “post offices” and “closings,” postal officials have special instructions: Handle With Care.

Congress will begin examining the U.S. Postal Service’s $92 billion hole next month, led by Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.

No one knows what the impact on Maine or the rest of the nation will be. But if a presidential commission’s suggestions to make the service “smaller and stronger” are followed, clearly some facilities, somewhere, will close.

Although such a move may be years away, postal officials are already skittish about the public panicking over the potential of their local post office closing before all the facts are out.

Recently asked for information on Maine post office locations, one postal official insisted that placing “post offices” and “closings” in the same sentence is “like shouting fire in a crowded theater.”

People are just that passionate about the mail.

Collins, chairwoman of the congressional committee that oversees the postal service, will begin a hearing on Sept. 3

“She recognizes the challenges of reform are daunting,” said Collins’ spokeswoman Elissa Canlas. At the same time, “Sen. Collins pledges to fight to preserve rural post offices in Maine that are vital to their communities.”

President Bush convened the postal commission last December. With $92 billion of debt and unfunded obligations — half of that related to retirees’ health care — the agency mandated to run a break-even business model was “at great risk,” as the report put it.

One in four consumers are paying at least some of their bills over the Internet, skipping stamps. Mail volume, currently at 202.2 billion pieces a year, is projected to start sliding in 2012.

“The postal network as it exists today is far too sprawling and cumbersome,” according to the commission. There’s need to “aggressively root out inefficiencies” and “many facilities could be consolidated or closed.”

It suggested forming a Postal Network Optimization Commission, modeled after the 1990s military base closure commission. Facilities would be recommended to the president and closures would take effect automatically unless Congress rejected the entire list within 45 days.

In its report, the commission noted the move would be politically and locally unpopular. It does not name an optimum number or specific criteria for closure.

Small post offices with low volume and operating losses would not necessarily be targeted, it said.

There are about 36,000 post offices nationwide, said Gerry McKiernan a Washington postal spokesman.

He has fielded lots of calls from reporters in rural states asking what’s going to happen in their states.

“I usually tell people they need to get the photographer down to their local post office that afternoon, we’re going to nail it shut. Then they laugh, then I laugh and I say, ‘This is nuts.’”

“Nuts,” he says, because no one knows what’s going to happen yet. It’s up to President Bush, and Congress to enact or not, with no particular timetable.

There are 425 post offices in Maine according to a list obtained by Collin’s office. However, the list includes only one facility per zip code. For instance, it names the Lewiston post office on Ash Street, but not the branch office on Lisbon Street.

McKiernan said he did not know the exact number for Maine.

Requests over a three-week span to numerous postal officials by the Sun Journal to get the addresses of Maine’s post offices were fruitless. The Sun Journal has filed a request for the complete list citing the Freedom of Information Act.

“We are at the very beginning, the very beginning, of what very well could be or could not be a long process,” McKiernan said. “I’m working through this idea of providing you a list. I think my overall responsibility is to prevent panic.”

Collins’ committee will convene its meeting Sept. 3.