Battle Likely At USPS Congressional Hearing / Direct Newsline 02/08/1999

Direct NewsLine-Media Central - February 8, 1999

Battle Likely At USPS Congressional Hearing

By Paul M. Alberta

The first Congressional hearing of the year on legislation to reform the U.S. Postal Service could turn into possible four-way "us-versus-them" donnybrook. Slated for Thursday, the hearing on the Postal Modernization Act of 1999 (HR-22) will pit the Postmaster General William J. Henderson, Postal Rate Commission Chairman Ed Gleiman, the presidents of at least two postal worker unions and members of the House postal subcommittee against one other. Officials of various direct marketing/mailing groups are scheduled to testify at a second hearing in March.

Henderson and Einar V. Dyhrkopp, chairman of the postal service's Board of Governors, are expected to recommend several changes in the measure that are more favorable to the USPS. Chief among them will be a recommendation to include a provision that would allow both the postal service and the PRC to separate postal revenues, costs, assets, and liabilities in the financing of both competitive, overseen by a private corporation created by the USPS, and non-competitive products and services. The USPS also wants certain operational expenses to be dropped from being considered in the development of postage rates.

Gleiman, on behalf of the PRC, is expected to express "qualified" support for the legislation as proposed while criticizing the USPS proposal and recommending several changes of his own, including expanding provisions in the bill increasing the PRC's authority over the USPS.

Meantime union presidents, Moe Biller of the American Postal Workers Union, and Vincent Sombrotto, National Association of Letter Carriers Biller, Sombrotto, as well as the officials of other postal worker unions, are expected to voice strong opposition to some of the bill's provisions dealing with labor-related issues, especially relating to competitive area job security.

Although the hearing will be the first this year since subcommittee chairman Rep. John McHugh (R-NY) reintroduced the bill, it is not the first on the subject. A total of five hearings have been held on the subject since McHugh first introduced postal reform legislation in June 1996. After three hearings, the bill died in committee later that year with the expiration of the 104th Congress. He reintroduced the measure in 1997, which also died in committee after two additional hearings with the passing of the 105th Congress.