Yesterday, the Postal Service Board of Governors postponed any action with respect to an exigent rate filing until at least their next scheduled meeting, which occurs at the end of September. In an official statement released yesterday afternoon, the Postal Service said:
“The Postal Service Governors met today at a regularly scheduled Board meeting. As part of the agenda, the Governors considered pricing issues, including the possibility of filing for price adjustments. The Governors continue to listen to stakeholders and have postponed final pricing decisions until the next scheduled Board of Governors meeting, Sept. 24 – 25, 2013.”
One definite final pricing decision described in the statement will be approving the annual CPI increase, expected to be about 1.8%, to take effect January 26.
As we highlighted in our postal and legislative update on Aug. 22, the industry believed that there was a very good chance the Board of Governors would approve the exigent filing at the meeting yesterday. While we do not know that exact reasons for the delay, it appears from their statement that the Board of Governors was reacting to customer concerns about the impact of an exigent rate increase in delaying action. We also understand the Postmaster General recently has been working diligently to bring together both postal customers and postal labor union presidents to discuss working together on legislation. Time will tell whether or not this activity will bring about new options for legislation, which would benefit both the USPS and customers, instead of the negative impact of an exigent rate filing. We will continue to work on this issue on behalf of our members.
Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.