The Postal Service and the Postal Regulatory Commission are currently working on the annual compliance review. The goal of the ACR, as stated in 39 U.S.C. §3652, is to determine if during the previous fiscal year the Postal Service has met all of the rate setting and service goals of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. The review deals primarily with the issue of … Read More
POStPlan: How to save $500 million without really trying
When the Postal Service gave the Postal Regulatory Commission its request for an Advisory Opinion on POStPlan — the plan to reduce hours at 13,000 post offices — it provided no cost-savings analysis. In his testimony, USPS witness Jeffrey Day says only that “the Postal Service anticipates that the POStPlan will provide significant labor cost savings due to lower salary … Read More
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse: The Postal Service has a new plan for the post office
After a year and a half spent threatening to close thousands of rural post offices, the Postal Service has suddenly changed course. Instead of closing small post offices, the Postal Service has come up with a way to make them irrelevant. The Postal Service’s new plan — awkwardly named "Post Office Structure Plan," or POStPlan — will reduce the hours … Read More
Avalanche averted: Postal Service backs off plan to close thousands of post offices
The Postal Service has decided not to announce mass post office closures on May 16, when the moratorium ends, and it will instead proceed with the closings in a more gradual way. How many, how slowly, remains to be seen. In the meantime, the Postal Service has a new plan. Some of the details were revealed to postmasters in a … Read More
Post Office Closings in 2011: Lists, maps, the whole mess
The past year was not a good one for those who value the institution of the brick-and-mortar post office. Over four thousand post offices were studied for closure, and were it not for the Christmas holiday suspension and the moratorium on closings, a large portion of them would have closed by year’s end. Just to put that in context, consider … Read More
Mass Appeals at the PRC
The Postal Service closed about 600 post offices in 2011, and it is poised to make mass closures in the spring when the moratorium ends on May 15. That will also mean mass appeals at the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), and last Thursday the Commissioners were talking all about it. Chairman Ruth Goldway began the Commission’s monthly meeting with a … Read More
The RAOI Advisory Opinion: A Transformative Moment or a Bump in the Road?
It’s been a week since the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) issued its Advisory Opinion on the Retail Access Optimization Initiative (RAOI), the Postal Service’s plan to close 3,652 post offices. The Postal Service has yet to issue a reply. Maybe the attorneys and strategists in postal headquarters just don’t know what to say. The Advisory Opinion says the plan to … Read More
The first RAOI post office closes, more Village Post Offices open, but where’s the hoopla?
It looks like the first post office on the Retail Access Optimization Initiative (RAOI) may have closed already — weeks ago, in fact — but somehow the news slipped by under radar. Plus, five more “Village Post Offices” (VPOs) have opened over the past few weeks, and hardly a word from the Postal Service about that either. Today we learn … Read More
The Postal Service Runs Amok: How Not to Close a Post Office
In the classic guidebook for lawyers,The Art of Cross-Examination, Francis Wellman advises, “A lawyer should never ask a witness in cross-examination a question unless in the first place the lawyer knows what the answer would be or in the second place didn’t care.” This week lawyers for the Postal Service cross-examined Mark Strong, president of the National League of Postmasters, … Read More
4,000 more post offices on the chopping block: Nothing personal, it’s just business
The Postal Service is in the process of closing some 3,650 post offices as part of its Retail Access Optimization Initiative (RAOI). The first of them will close by the end of the year, and it will take a few more months to work through the list. But the Postal Service is already looking ahead, and word now comes that … Read More
PRC Docket No. N2011-1 and the Future of the Post Office
On July 27, 2011, the US Postal Service submitted a request to the Postal Regulatory Commission for an Advisory Opinion about its Retail Access Optimization Initiative (RAOI), and the PRC opened Docket No. N2011-1, which will contain all of the testimony and related documents for the case. N2011-1 is likely to go down in history as one of the most … Read More
Interrogatories of the Limited Participant and USPS Responses
David Popkin participated in the 2009-10 Advisory Opinion on Stations and Branches, and he is participating again in a capacity called “Limited Participant.” On July 28, 2011, he submitted his own interrogatories, in two documents, and the Postal Service has already replied to his inquiries, so in the following summary, I’ll provide Popkin’s question/request and the USPS reply. These interrogatories … Read More
Interrogatories of the Public Representative and USPS Responses
As par tof the "discovery" phase of the PRC proceedings, the Public Representative (PR) can ask for more information and explanations from the Postal Service. First Interrogatories, #1 – #5 [The original document is here.] The PR refers to witness Boltd’s statement, “It should be emphasized that postal management is not pursuing the RAO Initiative in order to … Read More
The Testimony of James J. Boldt for the USPS
The Postal Service’s case is represented to the PRC by a witness who presents the plan. His name is James J. Boldt, and his statement begins by identifying himself as the National Manager, Customer Service Operations, in the Office of Delivery and Post Office Operations at Postal Service Headquarters. He has served in this capacity since May 2011. He previously … Read More
The USPS Requests an Advisory Opinion
The formal document that initiates the process for an Advisory Opinion comes from the Postal Service, and it’s called “Request of the United States Postal Service for an Advisory Opinion on Changes in the Nature of Postal Services,” and it’s dated July 27, 2011. [The original document is here.] The Request, as we’ll call it here, acknowledges that postal patrons accustomed … Read More
