It's not news that the U.S. Postal Service is on the economic ropes right now. It has lost billions of dollars a year as more people use e-mail instead of writing letters, and use electronic payments for their bills instead putting checks in the mail.
For the past four decades, the USPS has operated as an independent government agency that is supposed to be self-supporting. And because it has a monopoly on first- and third-class (“standard”) mail, the postal service is obligated to provide universal service six days a week to every corner of the nation.
Most post offices in the country don't cover their expenses. That's why the USPS is doing a study of about 3,700 post offices, mostly in rural areas, with an eye toward shrinking its retail network by 12 percent, including 14 post offices in Vermont.
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe recently said that “our customers' habits have made it clear that they no longer require a physical post office to conduct most of their postal business.” He predicts that nearly half of the roughly 32,000 postal facilities in the United States will be closed by 2018.
If that is Donahoe's vision for the future, we think that he has no idea of the importance of the postal service in a state like Vermont.
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In a small town, the post office is a community hub. It is also essential for the delivery of goods that you can't get through a computer. From Netflix discs to medicine, from magazines and newspapers to parcels and packages, the USPS still delivers when others can't or won't.
Here in southern Vermont, where broadband Internet service is still spotty, the post office plays an important role in people's lives. For people who, by choice or circumstance, don't have computers or cars, it is how they interact with the world.
Despite the competition from the Internet and private parcel shippers such as UPS and FedEx, the USPS delivers 40 percent of the world's mail to 150 million addresses in the United States. For 44 cents, you can send a letter from Brattleboro to any address east of the Mississippi River and have it arrive in two business days; it will arrive in only three business days to an address on the West Coast.
Conservatives in Congress have long pushed for the end of the USPS in favor of putting your first- and third-class mail service in the hands of private competitors.
We can imagine what that would mean for a state like Vermont. We would likely end up paying more money for slower, less-frequent service. People would have to drive longer distances to send or receive parcels. And it would likely mean the end of universal service, as authorized by the Constitution.
While the USPS says that retail locations located in rented-out spaces in local stores, libraries, and government buildings will pick up the slack and provide the services most used by patrons, these will not be full-service post offices. They will sell stamps and prepaid parcel post boxes, but do little else.
Yes, many small, rural post offices are not profitable, but closing them will do little to hold the USPS' bottom line. According to the Postal Regulatory Commission, closing all 10,000 small and rural post offices would save only 0.7 percent of the USPS operating budget.
Our nation's postal system was not designed to be profitable. It was designed to serve the public. It was designed to serve all America, all the time. Under federal law, the USPS “shall provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and small towns where post offices are not self-sustaining.”
The law also says, “No small post office shall be closed solely for operating at a deficit, it being the specific intent of the Congress that effective postal services be insured to residents of both urban and rural communities.”
The idea of the federal government providing a service for the public good is not fashionable right now in Washington. But universal mail service is a public good, and in many parts of America, including Vermont, it is essential. It needs to be preserved.