Where Are The Governors?

When Congress created the bill that ultimately became the Postal Reorganization Act, it placed the immediate oversight of the new U.S. Postal Service under the jurisdiction of an eleven-member Board of Governors, nine of which were to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in addition to a Governor-appointed Postmaster General and Deputy Postmaster General. In doing so, Congress clearly intended this governing board to be a driving force that would help oversee and shape the direction and the behavior of the institution that was to serve as the chief steward of the nation's postal system.

Unfortunately, instead of acting as a "driving force," the "governors" sometimes serve more as a brake on the Postal Service's momentum. Here's a simple case in point.

For the past five years, some of us have been struggling with legislative proposals to reshape and redirect the Postal Service to enable it better to compete and survive in a rapidly changing information marketplace. Yet during the entire five years during which the future of the Postal Service was being debated, the Governors have said and done nothing to contribute to any discussion or debate. Instead, postal management has been forced to sally forth on its own, skating on the thinnest of ice, without the benefit of any insight or direction by the nine people who are expected to have foresight and expert knowledge.

Now, I could possibly be wrong, and perhaps the Governors have been providing postal management with specific input and direction. If they have, however, it certainly is not discernible to anyone who has made a practice of following the Postal Service. In fact, even the most knowledgeable within the postal arena would be hard-pressed to recall any vision the Governors may have articulated on the nation's future postal needs or the Postal Service's role in satisfying them. Rather than moving purposefully toward a clearly defined end, the Postal Service has stumbled along in a herky-jerky fashion from one cloudily defined vision to another.

For instance, do the Governors have a clear vision of what the Postal Service's role should be in the electronic arena? If they do, have the Governors ever made any attempt to determine whether their vision is consistent with that held by the U.S. Congress or even the Administration? Have the Governors do anything publicly to cause anyone in the Congress or the Administration to believe that the Postal Service's future is at a critical juncture? For once, I won't answer those questions, but I do believe the Governors should.