Special Delivery

Like that unwanted advertising flyer that appears regularly in your mailbox, Postmaster General John Potter again delivered bad news Tuesday: The U.S. Postal Service lost $3.8 billion in the last fiscal year, is expected to lose another $7 billion this year and is projected to hemorrhage $238 billion over the next 10 years if Congress doesn't allow it to substantially change its business operations.

This is essentially the same pessimism Potter preached last year, only the situation has gotten worse. The USPS has for years seen its volume of mail decline as Americans switch to electronic correspondence. E-mail, online bill payments and banking, Internet retailing and social media haven't quite made envelopes and stamps obsolete, just terribly unprofitable.

That trend has been exacerbated by the economic recession, which has further reduced the post office's business deliveries. The number of items handled by the USPS fell from 213 billion in 2006 to 177 billion last year, and volume is expected to shrink to 150 billion by 2020. However, the number of places where mail must be delivered is increasing. That's a recipe for insolvency that can't be fixed by rate hikes alone.

A private business facing such a 1-2 punch would radically restructure to meet the changing landscape — reduce payroll, cut expenses, improve efficiency and find new ways to meet consumer demand. It would do whatever it took to survive, or it would die.

The USPS has tried to follow that strategy but has encountered resistance from its employees' union and Congress.

Potter this week took another crack at real reform, unveiling a 10-year plan that involves eliminating Saturday delivery, closing post offices, opening more postal facilities in convenience stores and supermarkets and reorganizing processing centers. His agency needs the same kind of flexibility that other businesses have.

Yet, when the USPS last year attempted to consolidate about 3,000 post offices it was met with outrage from federal lawmakers and the public. Just look at what happened in Bay County, Fla., where Parker officials and residents objected to a proposal to close the Eastside postal station at the corner of U.S. Business 98 and U.S. 98. In addition, postal workers, customers and county officials oppose a USPS plan to move some outgoing local mail operations to Pensacola.

Everyone agrees the postal service is in dire financial straits, they just want somebody else to make the sacrifice. The hometown operation is always vital and must be protected, while the neighbor's is always ripe for the plucking. There's a reason why government programs are virtually impossible to eliminate: Each has a constituency that will fight much harder to protect it than others will battle to cut it. The same applies to postal operations.

Ideally, the USPS would be privatized, its monopoly on First Class mail delivery eliminated and opened up to competition — the direction already taken by Germany, Japan and the European Union. The postal service would no longer be subject to political meddling that prevents it from doing what must be done.

REPRINTED FROM THE PANAMA CITY NEWS HERALD.

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