Daniel Indiviglio, writing on The Atlantic’s business blog, looks at the Postal Service’s gloomy FY09 financial results and declares 5-day mail delivery a “reasonable idea.” Then he looks a little further ahead — and predicts 5-day could eventually give way to even less frequent delivery: Bottom line: it seems that technology will increasingly take the place of postal service in the years to come. This time around, Saturday service may be eliminated. But give it a few more years, and we might see Monday-Wednesday-Friday service. One day, USPS may be eliminated entirely. Indiviglio casts that as a positive — the…
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The U.S. Postal Service finished fiscal year 2009 with a $3.8 billion loss — much smaller than expected — thanks to some last-minute congressional legislation and an accounting change. This might seem surprising, if you’ve been following our postal coverage; the agency has been on pace to post at least a $6 billion loss for much of the year. But a law passed by Congress in September allowed the agency to defer $4 billion in payments into its retiree health benefits trust fund. That knocked the deficit down to $3.8 billion, and allowed the Postal Service to pay all of its…
Are you one of the 18,000 people who accepted the Postal Service’s $15,000 buyout offer? Want to talk about why you took the deal? E-mail me. (Alternatively, if you didn’t accept the deal, I want to hear why not!) I’m working on a story about the buyouts, and I’d love to include your stories. Glad to keep you anonymous, of course.
A few of you have e-mailed me about the latest list of post office closures, released on Friday. I think there’s an interesting gap between how the public perceives the closures and how the Postal Service perceives them. The closures are getting a huge amount of attention. Newspapers across the country are running stories about them; Congress has called hearings about them; even Andy Rooney threw in his two cents. To the Postal Service, though, these closures are a pretty minor item. I don’t mean they’re not taking them seriously. But the closures represent a tiny fraction of the agency’s…
Here’s the updated list (pdf) of proposed post office closures from USPS. There are 371 post offices on the list, down from nearly 700 on the initial list released in July. Most of them are in major urban areas. California has the greatest number of proposed closures — roughly 70 of them, mostly in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. New York City, Atlanta, and several cities in Florida would also face cuts. The Postal Service started the summer with almost 3,600 post offices under review. It pared that list down to 677 before a July 30 congressional hearing on…
America’s one and only public crank, Andy Rooney, weighs in on the Postal Service’s plan to close hundreds of post offices (h/t Ed O’Keefe). He hates the idea: There’s definitely a generational gap here: People of Rooney’s age have a sentimental attachment to the mail that just doesn’t exist in younger generations. And obviously that stems from how frequently each group uses the mail. My grandparents still send me hand-written letters. My friends? Not so much. They rarely go to their post office, so they don’t have any sentimental attachment to the place. (If Gmail were shut down, on the…
The House of Representatives finally voted to approve H.R. 22, 388-32, more than eight months after it was introduced. The bill allows the Postal Service to pay health benefits for its current retirees out of a trust fund earmarked for future retirees. As Rebecca noted earlier, postal managers describe H.R. 22 as a necessity given their $7 billion budget deficit this year. The Postal Service needed to make a $5.4 billion payment into the retiree trust fund by Sept. 30, but the agency doesn’t have enough cash to make the payment. Without H.R. 22, it will be forced to default…
Within the next few hours, the House of Representatives may make a crucial decision regarding the fiscal future of the U.S. Postal Service. Due to a $7 billion deficit, the Postal Service can’t make its scheduled Sept. 30 payment to its retiree health benefits fund. HR 22, which the House debated Tuesday afternoon, would reduce this payment from roughly $5.4 billion to slightly more than $1 billion. Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., praised the bill as a necessary move to protect retirees while Congress debates the future of the Postal Service. Towns is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform…
Bloomberg says the Postal Service has pared back the list of post offices that it’s considering for closure. Only 413 facilities are on the chopping block now — down from nearly 3,600 on the original list, and close to 1,000 that we reported on last month. By the way, I’ve been meaning to post some of the e-mails I’ve received in regards to the Postal Service’s recent buyout offer. I appreciate all of your feedback; I don’t have time to respond to every e-mail, but I do read them all. I’ve copied a few e-mails (without names) after the jump.
Thanks for the overwhelming response about the Postal Service’s buyout plan — can’t respond individually to every one, but I appreciate all of the letters and comments. I’ll be contacting a few of you individually for a story I’m working on, and I’ll post some of the better responses (w/o names) on here later today. For now, keep ’em coming.