The following is a perspective by Bookspan Senior Vice President for Legal, Postal, and Government Affairs Robert J. Posch. Mr. Posch also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Postal Commerce.

For most of my professional life, I've been earning my living within an industry sector that historically has been very much dependent on the viability and affordability of a universal mail delivery system. By education and training, I'm a lawyer. By most accounts, I'm a damn good one.

Despite my many years of domestic and international legal and postal experience, I find myself totally baffled by the Postal Rate Commission's decision to turn down a very simple request sponsored by the Postal Service and its customers that incurred not a single word of opposition from any of the other stakeholders in the outcome of this year's postal rate case. I am referring to the Postal Service's request to permit a two-tenths of an ounce increase in the minimum per-piece/per-pound breakpoint for automation-rated letter-size Standard Regular Mail.

This change was sought for several real-world business reasons. First, the strictures imposed by the Postal Service's machinery on its ability to process automation-compatible letter-size mail are virtually gone. For the past several years, postal officials have acknowledged they have an ability to process mailer bar coded letter-size mail without difficulty up to and including four ounces. Just recently, the Postal Service's Vice President for Engineering announced that within the next few years, the Postal Service will be able to handle letters weighing as much as six ounces without difficulty. In light of this, it made little sense to many of the Postal Service's mail-dependent customers to deny them the flexibility they sought to maximize their own investment in automation capability, while expanding their ability to make a more market-savvy use of mail as a business development vehicle.

Mailers asked for this additional two-tenths ounce latitude for very practical operational reasons. While the present break-point permits automation rates for letters weighing as much as 3.3 ounces, it's extremely difficult to make full use of this weight break without knowing precisely the weight of all of the components that will make up a mailing. Experience has shown that to ensure mail pieces did not exceed this break point, mail pieces were deliberately were designed for weights well below 3.3 ounces. The additional two-tenths ounces allowance, it was reasoned, merely would permit mailers to plan more comfortably to prepare campaigns using pieces that would not greatly exceed the 3.3 ounces the present rule ostensibly provided.

From a postal perspective, this request should have been a no-brainer. Certainly postal management saw it that way, and readily agreed to present this proposal to the Commission in everyone's behalf. In the proceeding, mailers supported the proposal and no one bothered to raise any serious objection--except the Postal Rate Commission.

The Postal Rate Commission's "reasoning" in this matter, however, defies comprehension. In its decision it said:

Before allowing this de facto increase in the breakpoint for certain Standard A mailers (and thereby their rates), the Commission believes a more comprehensive assessment is needed.

For heaven's sake, to do what? What more could have been said about the proposal that could have made it more comprehensible? And how "comprehensive" does the Commission need an analysis in order to assess what clearly is not some give-away in postal rates, but is simply a straightforward practical operational and business marketing need?

I would urge the Governors to send this matter back to the Commission for reconsideration. If the Commission continues to pursue this nonsensical line, the Governors ought to direct management to implement the change nonetheless.

Good law should make good sense. This decision by the Commission is neither.