Author: Archive

The House Government Reform Committee began circulating a draft Monday night of the postal overhaul bill it will mark up Thursday, but some commercial mailers say the bill is too weak to save the beleaguered Postal Service. The 126-page draft includes many provisions recommended by the President’s Commission on the Postal Service last July, including mandated transparency regarding the agency’s finances, costs and operations. Like the commission’s recommendations, the bill would restructure the agency’s rate-setting process, establishing an inflationary rate increase cap and creating a strong regulator to monitor rates. But the bill would not give the Postal Service nearly the level of rate-setting freedom recommended by the commission, instead imposing price controls on competitive postal products. Some in the mailing industry, however, believe the committee is so eager to maintain coalition support that it has produced a fatally weak bill. “This is a horrible, horrible disappointment,” said Association for Postal Commerce President Gene Del Polito, who represents large commercial mailers such as Time, Capital One and RR Donnelly. “We have made clear there are two things that have to be done to reform the Postal Service: Give them new methods for cost determination and give them the authority to withdraw excess costs and needless services, such as facility consolidation,” he said. “There are no such provisions in the draft at all.”