A polite tiff has broken out between the U.S. Postal Service and its inspector general over whether a pension should count in determining whether a top officer’s compensation exceeded a legal pay cap. The officer, who was not named in the report, but whom sources identified as Paul Vogel, president of digital solutions, made a total last year of $306,250 in annual salary, pension and bonus, IG auditors found in a newly released report. That would be well above the maximum pay limit of $276,840 for USPS executives holding specially designated “critical” positions, according to the audit, which said the Postal…
Browsing: John Potter
The U.S. Postal Service may be struggling, but outgoing Postmaster General John Potter can count on a comfortable array of benefits to sustain him after he steps down Dec. 3, according to a rundown included in the U.S. Postal Service’s 10-K report made public Monday. Chief among them is almost $3.1 million in pension benefits accumulated during his 32 years with the Postal Service. In that respect, Potter would appear to be no different from any other USPS employee with a similar salary history and tenure in the Civil Service Retirement System. But he will also be able to tap…
Postmaster General John Potter is standing by his agency’s policy of paying the full cost of health insurance premiums for senior executives. According to a recent audit, the U.S. Postal Service could save about $567 million in fiscal 2011 if its employee contribution rate matched that of the federal government. For most employees, the Postal Service contributes 79 percent, compared to 72 percent elsewhere in the government. But postal executives don’t do as well as feds in other ways, Potter suggested at an end-of-the-fiscal-year news conference Friday. “Postal managers do not get locality pay,” he said. “Postal managers only get…
The U.S. Postal Service issued another updated list of possible post office closures (pdf) on Friday, and just 241 facilities remain, down from more than 3,300 when the review process started this summer. Most of the proposed closures are still concentrated in a few states. Florida has the most, with 40; mail volume has fallen faster than the national average in Florida, largely due to the collapse in the housing sector. California and Ohio both have 26 possible closures; Georgia has 17; and Tennessee has 16. The list still isn’t final. Postmaster General John Potter said last month that he…
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…
Two questions for our readers at the Postal Service, following up on this afternoon’s announcement that USPS will offer buyouts to tens of thousands of employees. First, I’ve been getting e-mails for at least a year from postal workers who said they would consider retiring early if the Postal Service offered an incentive. That incentive is here now, in the form of a $15,000 payout over 12 months. Is it enough? Will you take it? Second, maybe you read this story I wrote in April after interviewing Postmaster General John Potter. It includes the following: The Postal Service’s last round…
You’ll recall from this story yesterday that the Postal Service is in danger of running out of cash this year, barring new legislation from Congress. John Potter, the postmaster general, said he intends to keep paying salaries and operational expenses — but the Postal Service might have to forego its annual contribution to the retiree health benefit trust fund. What happens then? There won’t be an impact on retirees, because the trust fund covers future retiree benefits. The Postal Service currently spends about $2 billion annually to cover current retirees. The more interesting question is what Congress or the Treasury…
One other thought from today’s postal hearing. There was a lot of outrage over John Potter’s compensation package. It’s worth about $850,000, though that includes contributions to his retirement plan and his $66,000 security detail — he’s only taking home about half that amount. Still, Potter earned a $130,000 bonus last year, even though the Postal Service posted a $3 billion loss. Potter said it was because the Postal Service met other goals, like customer satisfaction and workplace safety. But the bonus prompted some congressional criticism: Rep. Stephen Lynch: Just because we’re rewarding executives at AIG… for running their companies…
I’ve got a story up on the Web site about today’s marathon Postal Service hearing. It wasn’t very encouraging: As things stand now, the Postal Service faces a $6 billion deficit, and it will run out of money by year’s end. There are some short-term fixes, like switching to 5-day delivery, or changing the way the Postal Service pays retiree health benefits. They’re detailed in my story. And they’re enough to “plug the gaps,” so to speak, and get the Postal Service through the recession. John Potter, the postmaster general, says he’s confident mail volume will pick up once the…
Should the CEO of a company posting billions in annual losses receive a 50 percent raise and a six-figure bonus? And I’m not talking about the banks, or the crumbling auto companies. I’m talking about the U.S. Postal Service. ABC News reported last night that the postmaster general, John Potter, received almost an $80,000 raise last year — his base salary is now $263,575 — along with a $135,041 “incentive bonus.” This in a year when the Postal Service posted a $2.8 billion loss. Throw in retirement benefits and other perks, and his annual salary comes to more than $850,000. I don’t…