Dear Comrades,
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Postal Service said on Wednesday that it is abandoning for now its plan to close thousands of post offices in rural locations and instead will shorten their hours of operation.
The change represents a victory for U.S. lawmakers
and rural communities who created a backlash against the cash-strapped
agency last summer when it began considering more than 3,600 post
offices for closure this year.
Rather than
shuttering offices starting next week, when a self-imposed moratorium on
closings was set to end, the plan is to cut the operating hours of
13,000 locations with little traffic to between two and six hours a day.
"We've listened to
our customers in rural America and we've heard them loud and clear -
they want to keep their post offices open," said Postmaster General
Patrick Donahoe. "There's no plan for closings at this point."
The new plan would
save more money - roughly $500 million annually compared to $200 million
under the old plan - and could placate some lawmakers in Washington who
have been critical of the virtually bankrupt agency as it pushes for
other controversial changes, such as ending Saturday mail or raising
postage rates.
But lawmakers
cautioned that removing the threat of thousands of closings should not
dissuade Congress from urgently passing legislation to staunch the USPS's annual losses of billions of dollars.
The Postal Service,
which relies on sales of stamps and other products rather than taxpayer
dollars, has been losing billions of dollars each year as Americans
increasingly communicate online.
Barring drastic changes, many of which require
congressional action, officials have said the mail agency could face
annual losses of $18 billion by 2015.
The Senate
passed legislation last month that allows the USPS to end Saturday mail
delivery after two years, restructures a massive annual payment for
future retiree health benefits, and lets it use a surplus of about $11
billion in a retirement account to offer retirement incentives to older
workers.
House of
Representatives leaders have not scheduled a vote on postal legislation,
and a bill from Republican Darrell Issa that passed his Oversight
Committee more than six months ago is significantly different from the
Senate version.
One of the major differences between the bills was how to handle post office closings.
The Senate bill put in place additional protections for rural
locations, such as requiring the agency to look at Internet access in
each community.
During debate on
the Senate floor, some senators said the bill did not go far enough and
called for a longer moratorium on post office closings. Others favored
the House approach, which tasks an oversight group with deciding which
locations to close.
The Postal
Service's move to keep post offices open at reduced hours could
eliminate that controversial debate among lawmakers, said Art Sackler of
the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, a group that
represents business mailers.
"I think that's a step in the right direction, both
from the standpoint of serving the public and from removing a real choke
point on getting the legislation that is so urgently needed," Sackler
said. "The path is clearer to getting a bill done here."
The Postal Service is now seeking regulatory approval for the new rural post office strategy, which would not be completely implemented until September 2014.
LEGISLATIVE HOPE
Lawmakers repeated calls on Wednesday to pass legislation to help return the Postal Service to profitability.
"Stopgap, piecemeal measures like the proposal offered
today only address a small part of the problem and will not keep the
Postal Service from an imminent collapse," Senator Thomas Carper, a
Democrat, said in a statement.
But some lawmakers said the Postal Service's decision may lessen a sense of urgency to pass a postal overhaul.
Previously the USPS
had agreed to a moratorium through May 15 on the closing of post
offices and processing facilities. As that date approached, a bipartisan
group of lawmakers hoped to use the impending closures to drum up
support in the House for the Senate-passed postal bill.
Democratic Representative Peter Welch, who planned to
reach out to lawmakers facing closures in their districts, said the
Postal Service's plan removes a deadline to act.
"It does seem the brinkmanship style here in Congress often requires a drop-dead deadline," Welch said.
Lawmakers had criticized the agency for focusing on
small, money-losing post offices without considering factors such as
community impact or Internet access.
A Reuters
investigation determined that about one-third of the offices facing
closure were located in areas with limited or no wired broadband.
The Postal Service has announced plans to contract with
local general stores to offer some services and to use more rural
letter carriers, who serve as a post office on wheels, in areas where
they close.
Communities can choose to use these "village post offices" in conjunction with fewer hours at their post offices.
The Postal Service also said it was offering more than 21,000 postmasters a buy-out to retire by the end of July.
The Postal Service
will make an announcement next week about its earlier plan to close more
than 200 mail processing centers.
(Editing by Anthony Boadle and Philip Barbara)
http://in.news.yahoo.com/u-drops-plan-close-rural-post-offices-190209240--sector.html
