Postal Service assesses future

A commission seeks to match the Postal Service with changing times.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some small-town post offices could be replaced by kiosks at a shopping mall under the vision of a commission assessing the future of the Postal Service.
"Low activity" post offices could be turned to more productive use as community centers, town halls or businesses, the President's Commission on the United States Postal Service recommended Wednesday.
The commission also called for giving the post office more freedom to set stamp prices, said it should concentrate on a core mission of delivering the mail and recommended a new corporate style board of directors.
But it rejected proposals to end the postal monopoly or to privatize the agency.
If adopted by Congress and the president, the recommendations could affect virtually every American.
After years of congressional discussion of postal reform, and an effort in the agency to make what changes it can legally, President Bush formed the commission in December to study the agency and to make recommendations.
The Post Office suffered a loss of $676 million last year and is hoping to end this year about $600 million in the black. But the agency, which does not receive taxpayer money for operations, has suffered a decline in mail volume two years in a row for the first time as it faces a weak economy, the terrorist attacks and increasing electronic commerce.
"One has to be really impressed with the depth and quality of the recommendations they have put together," Postal Chief Financial Officer Richard Strasser said after the session.
Similar proposals
Many recommendations are similar to provisions in a bill sponsored by Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., said McHugh's chief of staff, Robert Taub.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in a statement that he is pleased that some of the recommendations closely mirror concepts that he developed with other members of Congress in a postal reform bill last year.
Neal Denton of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, a trade group, said he expected the report to get a warm reception in Congress.
"The Commission made it clear this morning that it wants to close post offices without regard to the impact on consumers or the local community," charged Bill Clay, chairman of the interest group Consumer Alliance for Postal Service.
The commission proposed an eight-member panel to recommend closings and consolidations of mail handling and distribution facilities, and called on Congress to lift restrictions on closing local post offices.
Controversy
Most likely to generate debate is the proposal to end the restrictions on closing money-losing post offices, many located in smaller towns.
"You don't necessarily need post offices -- you need postal services delivered in the most convenient way," said Harry J. Pearce, co-chairman of the commission and chairman of Hughes Electronics Corp. He noted mail services can be made available in malls, stores and other locations.
In many communities the post office owns valuable, centrally located real estate that could be sold to raise income. In other towns, where the post office has been a center of activity, the agency might donate the facility to the local government or a nonprofit group for use as a community center or town hall.
The commission wants to see maximum local input in the final decision on each office, said co-chairman James A. Johnson, vice chairman of the merchant banking firm Perseus, L.L.C.
With some 35,000 offices across the country, the Postal Service has long sought to close offices it considers unnecessary, but has often been thwarted by Congress when communities complained.
With that in mind, the commission recommended that when a set of national recommendations is prepared for closings and consolidations, it take effect unless rejected in its entirety by Congress within 45 days.
Wednesday's recommendations did not address the postal work force, though that is expected to be in the final report.
Pearce commented after the meeting that the work force needs to be "right-sized" in the face of automation and consolidation, adding that there is an opportunity to do that because many postal workers will reach retirement age over the next five years.
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