After more than seven years of failed efforts in Congress to reform the U.S. Postal Service, a group of catalogers and other postal clients have formed an organization to push through postal reform. The new organization, named the Mailing Industry CEO Council, includes Lands’ End president/CEO David Dyer and Michael Sherman, former president/CEO of Fingerhut Cos.
The group’s primary goal is to promote the creation of a presidential postal commission to jump-start legislative reform of the Postal Service. “It appears that a presidential commission is going to be necessary to enable us to face up to the challenges the postal system faces,” council member William Davis, chairman/president/CEO of printer R.R. Donnelley, said in a statement. “A commission needs to be an impetus for legislative reform, not an excuse for congressional delay.”
The Postal Service, which ran a deficit of $1.7 billion for fiscal 2001, is expected to have lost nearly $1 billion the fiscal year 2002 ended in September. The agency, which owes the U.S. Treasury more than $12 billion, has increased rates three times during the past two years.