Bill to improve Postal Service’s accountability a good start

A bipartisan bill to stop postal rate increases until delivery improves is a good step forward, but the U.S. Postal Service needs a change in leadership direction.

The bill specifically would require the U.S. Postal Service to meet performance standards before being able to enact an additional surcharge to local newspapers and other periodicals.

The legislation requires that the USPS must either achieve at least a 95% on-time delivery rate for periodicals or improve its on-time delivery rate by at least two percentage points in order to be able to unlock its 2% surcharge authority for newspapers.

It also puts accountability measures in place, including directing the USPS to report its progress annually to the Postal Regulatory Commission and instructing the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study and submit a report to Congress on options for alternate pricing models that would support newspapers.

Most community newspapers, including this one, are distributed through the postal service. This is nothing new and has been going on since before the founding of the country. There is a reason that Benjamin Franklin, a newspaper publisher, was the first postmaster general.

Across the country, community newspapers spend millions of dollars a year in postage and represent a signifi cant portion of overall mail volumes. Unfortunately, the USPS under current postmaster general Louis DeJoy is more concerned about kissing up to online retailers to grow the Postal Service’s share of that delivery market than in making sure people people get their letters, magazines and newspapers in a timely manner.

In addition to passing along steep increases in postage rates, the Postal Service administration also moved the goalposts on what it considers providing excellent service. Where in the past it may take one to two days for a first class letter to go from Medford to Rib Lake, a Taylor County Board member recently reported it taking five days for a letter mailed from the courthouse to get to his home near Rib Lake.

When it comes to community newspapers and other periodicals, the track record is even more abysmal. To combat this and serve our customers with a timely product, we have to add delivery routes to drop off bundles of newspapers to local post offices throughout the region. This has added significant road mileage with corresponding increases in fuel usage, wear and tear on vehicles and personnel expenses, on top of paying for increased postal rates.

As with any household or business, increasing costs in one area need to be made up in other areas, forcing advertising and subscription rates to be increased just to keep up with rising delivery expenses, which is on top of the large increase in expenses all people have experienced in recent years.

The USPS leadership has forgotten the “service” portion of its name and Congress, through bipartisan legislation such as the bill introduced this week, needs to remind Postal Service leadership that they work to service the public.

For more information on the newly introduced bill, entitled the Deliver for Democracy Act, see page 4.

The Tribune-Record-Gleaner editorial board consists of publisher Kris O’Leary and Star News editor Brian Wilson.