Rule Panel Can Close Window On Postal Union

By ARI PAUL

A Federal court has rejected a lawsuit brought by a major postal union seeking access to the U.S. Postal Service's Mailers Technical Advisory Committee after it was barred from its meetings.

WILLIAM BURRUS: A rubber-stamp for big mailers.

The American Postal Workers Union and the Consumer Alliance for Postal Services (CAPS) had claimed in their suit that not disclosing the business of this committee was a violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The committee was set up by the USPS to improve mailing service and technology.

Edge to Corporations?

CAPS represents non-profit organizations, labor unions and other large-scale mailer-users and had wanted to have input at the committee, just as many corporate mailers do. After being denied access to the committee and unsuccessfully trying to gain its meeting records through the Freedom of Information Act, it joined the APWU in the lawsuit. But U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson dismissed their case March 28, saying that the law was clear that the USPS was exempted from this law.

"This reading is supported both by the contemporaneous arguments of legislators and by the numerous opportunities Congress has had - and declined - to make FACA expressly applicable to USPS," the District of Columbia jurist said in his decision. "In short, the intent of Congress in exempting the Postal Service from laws 'dealing with' works, officers and budgets was not to suspend the operation of a narrow subset of provisions, but to remove the Service broadly from the system of proceduralized review that Congress uses for overseeing the operations of the administrative state."

Judge Robertson went on to say that such reasoning made "perfect policy sense," because Congress wanted market forces to set the postal agenda in order to allow the USPS to act more like a private business than a government agency, "favoring the expedient of cost-constraints over the impediment of proceduralized oversight as the best way of keeping USPS in line with its mission."

APWU: Big Mailers Benefit

But APWU President William Burrus argued not only that outside groups were entitled to information from the committee, but that it has created a postal system that, contrary to the judge's claims, has not served the needs of the public.

"The APWU is deeply concerned that the Postal Service has relinquished its strategic policy-making to the largest mailers, and that it has done so in secret," he said in a statement. "Using MTAC and similar forums, big mailers have set the USPS agenda. This may explain why the Postal Service has repeatedly proposed postal rates and policies that favor large mailers at the expense of individuals and small businesses."

The union and CAPS have not yet said whether they will appeal the case.

"We just think there should be a seat at the table other than large corporate mailers," said CAPS Executive Director Rick Farrell. "The decision-making process should not just be the big bulk-mailers."

He added that the court's decision left the small-scale mail-users without a say in what he believed was a public service, not a corporate enterprise.

"There's other points of view here," Mr. Farrell said. "They have an interest not only in the price of mailing but also in availability."