Mailing industry groups were generally pleased that Rep. John McHugh reintroduced his stalled postal reform bill at the opening session of the 109th Congress last month.
But others warned that mailers must press the White House to clarify why it didn’t support the bill in the last Congress.
Neal Denton, the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers’ executive director, 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 Department.”
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 Treasury pick up the tab.
But the law that eventually was passed — P.L. 108-18 — put the money the postal service 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 postal service doesn’t have to file a large rate case in 2005 for implementation next year (Direct, Oct. 15, 2004).
Denton said resolution of these matters might even lessen the impact of the postal rate case the USPS is expected to file this spring. But he 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 pick up where we left off last year and hit the ground running.”
Other observations 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 measure’s prospects in this Congress since 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 enough on this, we’re likely to end up where we are now,” Del Polito said.
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