Business, Government Legal News from throughout WVPostal Service to Cut First-Class Mail, Slow Delivery

In an attempt to avert bankruptcy, the U.S. Postal Service announced Dec. 5 its plans to slow first-class delivery next spring and eliminate next-day delivery for the first time in nearly 40 years.

The changes could affect everything from check payments to magazine subscriptions and add cost to mail order prescription drugs, especially in rural areas. The cuts will also close about 250 of nearly 500 mail processing centers across the country as early as next March. These consolidations could lengthen the time it takes for consumers to receive mail. Currently, first-class mail is generally delivered within one to three business days. However cutbacks could lengthen delivery time to two to three days and periodicals could take two to nine days for delivery.

The price of stamps will also increase to 45 cents beginning Jan. 22.

"The U.S. Postal Service must reduce its operating costs by $20 billion by 2015 in order to return to profitability," said David Williams, vice president of network operations. "The proposed changes to the service standards will allow for significant consolidation of the postal network in terms of facilities, processing equipment, vehicles and employee workforce and will generate projected net annual savings of approximately $2.1 billion."

The USPS is waiting for Congress to authorize a plan that would eliminate Saturday delivery and reduce labor and health care costs. While the USPS is an independent agency, Congress does control some portions of its operations. The changes in first-class mail can be implemented without congressional permission, however.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and raking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced a bill Nov. 2 in an attempt to restructure the postal service.

"The postal service literally won't survive without legislative and administrative reforms," Collins said in a statement issued after the bill was introduced. "Absent action, it wont' be able to meet its payroll a year from now. The postal service is vital to our economy, yet is on the verge of collapse."

According to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, roughly 25,000 of 32,000 post offices operate at a loss.

"We have thousands of Post Offices that bring in less than $20,000 in revenue in a year, but cost more than $60,000 to operate," he said at a Nov. 21 meeting of the National Press Club. "Many of these are within just a few miles of another Post Office.

On Sept. 15, the postal service announced it would begin studying 252 of 487 mail processing facilities for possible closure. The postal service also will send to the Postal Regulatory Commission a request for an advisory opinion regarding service standard changes associated with a significant rationalization of its mail processing network, according to a Dec. 5 news release from the USPS.

Donahoe went on to say that customers don't have to necessarily visit their local post offices to conduct business. Retail partners sell stamps and some provide drop-off locations for packages and mail, which Donahoe said is much more convenient for customers. Although there will always be a role for the traditional post office, Donahoe said the postal service must be willing and able to provide more creative, flexible solutions to problems the agency faces.

"We are in a deep financial crisis today because we have a business model that is tied to the past.  We are expected to operate like a business, but we do not have the flexibility to do so," Donahoe said. "Our business model is fundamentally inflexible.  It prevents the postal service from solving problems and being effective in the way a business would.