Browsing: Postal Regulatory Commission

For anyone needing yet another marker of the U.S. Postal Service’s condition, here you go: Total work hours last year fell to their lowest point since the mail carrier became an independent federal agency in 1971. That’s according to the Postal Regulatory Commission’s “Annual Compliance Determination” report released this week. For fiscal 2011, total work hours dropped to just under 1.15 billion, the report says. With the exception of rural letter carriers, no craft was spared. Clerks and mail handlers were hardest hit, with their total hours dipping almost 4 percent. The decline shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that…

The U.S. Postal Service signaled today that it will suspend mail processing plant closures starting Aug. 31 “to avoid any adverse impact on the November election.” The freeze will last until early next year, according to a news release, and comes after some state election officials had reacted with alarm to the possible disruption to vote-by-mail balloting. But today’s announcement also raises the odds that the planned downsizing (in which 223 of 461 processing plants would ultimately be closed or consolidated for a predicted savings of more than $2 billion annually) will be shelved for the rest of this year.…

Barely two weeks after a prominent senator questioned her travel activities, Postal Regulatory Commission Chairman Ruth Goldway is unapologetically heading overseas. “I know that travel raises questions,” Goldway said in a Friday interview two days before embarking on a 13-day trip to Switzerland,  “but I really feel that I’m doing an honest job and the right thing for the Postal Regulatory Commission and the country.” After leaving on a flight from Washington this Sunday, Goldway will spend most of the next two weeks in the Swiss capital of Bern, according to an itinerary provided by the commission.  The first leg, running from Monday…

Members of Congress were quick to weigh in on the U.S. Postal Service’s downsizing plans Thursday. And for the most part, they were not happy. “This plan makes no sense at all and should be abandoned,” argued Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, where a mail processing plant is slated to close. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is “barreling ahead to implement drastic cost-cutting measures” before regulators give their views, objected Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, which would lose two of its three plants to those measures. The Postal Service “should focus on common sense solutions that improve its fiscal solvency” instead of putting…

Postal Regulatory Commission Ruth Goldway has replied to a senator’s inquiry about her travel practices, publicly posting her response and a host of supporting documents on the agency’s web site. In a letter last week to Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., Goldway attached a summary of her trips since becoming PRC chair in August 2009, and for good measure included itineraries and agendas, a synopsis of the commission’s travel policies and a listing of travel by her two immediate predecessors as chairman. “This information demonstrates that commission travel is in support of statutory obligations, performed in a cost-efficient manner and benefits…

As expected, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., has formally asked Postal Regulatory Commission Chairman Ruth Goldway to explain all official travel since she assumed the position 2-1/2  years ago. In a letter to Goldway sent today, Carper sought a detailed itinerary and justification for each official trip she’s taken–along with similar information for her two most recent predecessors—by Feb. 20. Carper, who chairs a Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the U.S. Postal Service and the PRC, also requested details on the commission’s travel policy and any procedures in place to prevent wasteful or unneeded travel. “Given the Postal Service’s ongoing financial…

There’s some moderately big news out of the Postal Regulatory Commission, which has denied the U.S. Postal Service’s request for fast-track review of plans to weaken first-class service standards and close  up to approximately 250 mail processing plants. Last month, USPS lawyers had asked the commission to issue a legally required advisory opinion by mid-April. But in a Tuesday order, the PRC said “the complexity of the case appears to justify the schedule as issued.” Under that timetable, the commission won’t release the opinion until late July at the earliest. Long story short, this is bad news for postal leaders…

Closing post offices isn’t popular and the Postal Regulatory Commission has the workload to prove it. From July to the present, the number of pending appeals awaiting PRC action skyrocketed from 14 to 113. Small wonder, then, that the commission is reworking what Chairman Ruth Goldway calls a 35-year-old system. Under newly unveiled rules, postal customers can submit petitions and supporting documentation in “plain language,” Goldway said in a news release today. Among other changes, the new procedures will ease requirements for petitioners who file appeals, but don’t use the Internet; allow people to file comments without formally intervening; and…

In the context of the U.S. Postal Service’s zillion or so other problems, this one doesn’t loom very large, but the mail carrying agency has struck out in its bid for a stay in proceedings on the exigent rate case that began last year. In an order released today, the Postal Regulatory Commission said the case is “now ready to proceed,” and rejected the Postal Service’s request for the stay until Dec. 15. This case dates back to July 2010, when the Postal Service sought approval for a package of rate increases that would have boosted the price of a first-class…

As it appeals the denial of an “exigent” rate increase request, the U.S. Postal Service is arguing that the Postal Regulatory Commission’s turndown was “arbitrary and capricious,” according to a brief filed late this afternoon with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Among other points, USPS lawyers contend that the five-member commission established “new requirements that were not shared with or explained to the Postal Service,” according to an agency summary. “Instead, the PRC simply denied the request as a whole and punted the Postal Service’s entire financial crisis to Congress,” the brief concludes. The…