The House postal subcommittee is scheduled to take final action on legislation to reform the U.S. Postal Service on Thursday, its chairman, Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), said last week.
“It’s time to move it forward,” he said in a statement announcing the panel’s scheduled action on a revised version of his Postal Modernization Act, the third since McHugh introduced it in 1996. Thursday will mark the second time that the panel has considered McHugh’s bill, approving it for consideration by its parent, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, now just called the Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN).
Many of those revisions contained in the 182-page bill incorporate recommendations made by both the USPS and industry representatives. The revisions will permit the USPS to divide its products and services into noncompetitive and competitive overseen by a private law corporation, but prohibit it from unfair competition and violations of various anti-trust laws.
Although he endorsed many of the new provisions in the bill, Gene A. Del Polito, the Advertising Mail Marketing Association’s president, said he still had “grave reservations” about the private law corporation. He said that “if something happens to Priority and Express Mail, parcel post rates would go through the roof and the only people would win would be United Parcel Service, the postal service’s main competitor for parcels.”
Other revisions include: allowing negotiated service contracts with mail consolidators, not just large, high-volume mailers; tighter financial, product and service controls on the private law corporation; participation of the U.S. Customs Service in the development of international postal agreements negotiated on behalf of the USPS by the U.S. State Department, and expanding the postal service’s authority in negotiating mail transportation contracts.
