Congress should let Postal Service make its own business decisions

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Pity the poor Postal Service.
It is no longer the Post Office, a governmental agency.
Instead, it is a non-governmental entity that is supposed to run itself like a business - except that Congress has to approve everything.
Imagine what our newspaper would be like if we had to:

• Get the Borough of New Bethlehem to approve the placement of every vending machine.
• Get the Pennsylvania Legislature to decide whether we could publish a newspaper on Saturdays or not.
• Get the commissioners in the seven counties in which we circulate our family of newspapers to all agree on what day we will take as our Christmas Day holiday this year.

The Postal Service's managers have been saying for decades that they need to close small, inefficient offices.
Congress won't allow it.
Stupid.
Did the gas company or the power company or the trash disposal company have to get governmental approval to close the offices that once existed in every community back in the day when in-person, in-cash payments of bills was the norm?
No.
Businesses that closed too many offices suffered losses of customers. Public utilities only needed to ensure that bills could be paid and customers could obtain service, locales notwithstanding.
If the Postal Service is to meet its mandate to be self-supporting despite its responsibility to provide free mail delivery to everyone, it simply must have more flexibility in determining the "how" and "when," within broad limits - and with maximum consideration to productivity and efficiency, not to featherbedding preservation of union jobs.
For goodness sake, the Postal Service is even banned from delivering containers of alcoholic beverages.
"No business facing the kinds of difficulties the Postal Service faces would survive for very long if it were told how many retail outlets they should have and where they should be located," Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said of the agency that wants to close small, low-volume offices but faces fierce opposition when it tries to do so. Carper is the chairman of a relevant Senate subcommittee.
Congress should set broad requirements, and get out of the business of micromanaging the Postal Service.