Eleventh-hour effort to save postal centers merits support

It’s crunch time for efforts of 82 hit-listed U.S. Postal Service processing centers to dodge the bullet of permanent closing. Those shutdowns, which include one at the Downtown Youngstown Post Office, will begin in earnest early next month. Centers in Akron and Toledo will be shuttered in April; those in Youngstown and Dayton will close by July 15.

Fortunately for supporters of safeguarding quality standards of mail delivery and of protecting 15,000 solid middle-class jobs, there’s still time to act. But that action must be forceful and rapid.

The American Postal Workers Union last week launched a one-stop website, MyMail-Ohio.com, on which postal consumers can vent their opposition to the closures and can send letters and emails to federal lawmakers in support of legislation to stop the closings and improve mail delivery standards across the United States. It also includes a portal to report complaints of delayed mail delivery as a result of cutbacks already implemented.

House Resolution 784, the Protect Overnight Delivery Act introduced last month, would reinstate overnight delivery of first-class mail and and would prevent the mothballing of the processing centers, employing a about 15,000 workers. U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, stands as one of 66 co-sponsors of the legislation, which has been parked in committee for about one month.

Public input

He and others need broader based public input to get the bill moving on a fast track toward serious consideration. The impact of failing to act would be significant indeed.

The potential scope of the hit on Greater Youngstown alone is detailed in a report titled, “The Economic Impact of Downsizing Postal Sorting Operations in Youngstown, Ohio,” completed and released in November 2014 by the Fiscal Policy Institute, an independent nonpartisan nonprofit research institution based in New York.

Among its findings, the closing of the Walnut Street facility:

Would destroy 261 jobs with incomes totaling $15.9 million, which is twice the annual savings projected as a result of its consolidation with Cleveland.

Would result in the loss of $1.8 million in business income annually in Metro Youngstown.

Would reduce federal payroll and income taxes by $2 million and cost Ohio over $238,000 in state and local taxes.

Some, of course, will argue that the cutbacks are warranted due to gross inefficiencies at the USPS. To be sure, the biggest elephant in the post office weighing down its profitability has been the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act in 2006. It requires the postal service to fund retiree health-care benefits 75 years in advance. Any long-term solution must chip away at that onerous burden.

But in the short term, one can reasonably argue that the closings will multiply inefficiencies. For example, just how efficient is it to transport a letter mailed in Youngstown to Cleveland for processing, only to truck it back to Youngstown a day later, thereby delaying delivery and adding to the service’s postal costs.

Profitable quarter

What’s more, snail-mail volume actually has begun to increase. According to the USPS Financial Statement for the first four months of fiscal year 2015 (October through January), a $1.35 billion profit in Controllable Operating Income was posted and total U.S. mail volume actually increased 1.4 percent in January 2015 over January 2014 levels.

Because mail service is so critical to so many, even in this age of electronic communications and bill-paying services online, we strongly urge Congress to act fast toward preventing the shutdowns and their resulting decline in efficient mail service and delivery.