Mailers Warm to Reintroduction of Postal Bill

Mailing industry groups were generally pleased that Rep. John McHugh reintroduced last year's stalled postal reform bill on the opening session of the 109th Congress Tues.

But others warned that mailers must press the White House to clarify why it did not support the bill in the last Congress.

Neal Denton, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, took this as a very positive sign.

"Over the past decade, John McHugh has been the mailing community's best friend on Capitol Hill," he said "And the bill addresses two key issues of [releasing money from the] escrow account and turning over responsibility for the military pensions [of former postal employees] to the Treasury Dept.

In 2003, when the Office of Personnel Management discovered that the USPS was set to overpay its contributions to this fund by more than $70 billion, the mailing industry lobbied hard to get a law passed to have the Treasury Department pick up the tab.

But the law that eventually was passed — P.L. 108-18 — put the money the USPS would save into an escrow account rather than just letting the USPS have it to pay down its debt and hold off rate increases. [At present, the escrow provision has expired and things are back at square one].

Mailer groups had been clamoring to have portions of this escrow money released early, in part so the USPS doesn't have to file a large rate case in 2005 for implementation in 2006 (Direct, Oct. 15, 2004).

Denton said that resolution of these matters might even lessen the impact of the postal rate case that the USPS is expected to file this spring.

But Denton conceded that many issues in the bill still need work.

"We're pleased with Congressman McHugh's decision to reintroduce the House postal reform bill," said Jerry Cerasale, Direct Marketing Association senior vice president in a statement. "While we and others in the business mailing community continue to have a number of concerns about the bill as presently drafted, his action will enable us to pickup where we left off last year and hit the ground running."

Other observationss were not as rosy.

"It's the same bill as last year with all the mark-ups -- completely unchanged, "said Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce. He noted he was unsure about the bill's prospects in this Congress given the fact that President Bush did not feel last year's bills contained enough "reform" for him to sign it and that nobody he spoke to could define that reform clearly enough.

"Unless somebody presses the administration on this enough, we're likely to end up where we are now," said Del Polito.