Postmaster general foresees end to mail monopoly
By Randolph E. Schmid
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The post office monopoly on delivering letters will fade away but the agency will maintain a secure place in America, outgoing Postmaster General Marvin Runyon predicted Tuesday.
Runyon, in a speech at the National Press Club, also called for changes in the law to give the Postal Service more freedom to set rates and offer new services.
And he said he anticipates a world, by 2020, in which paper mail and electronic mail blend together and the Postal Service is a much more automated operation.
Currently, only the post office is allowed to deliver first-class mail, a monopoly that has existed since the founding of the country. Agency officials have long insisted they need this protection in order to maintain a national service that reaches every American at the same price.
"By the year 2020, I foresee ... (this) going away. Not through legislative fiat. Not through the power of PAC dollars. But through the natural forces of marketplace competition," Runyon said in the speech marking the end of his tenure in office.
"By the year 2020, there will be so many ways to communicate, advertise and ship merchandise, the monopoly will simply be irrelevant," he said.
Runyon, who became the nation's 70th postmaster general July 6, 1992, plans to leave office June 1.
Already electronic mail is becoming a major factor in communications, and by next year all federal benefit payments must be made electronically instead of through the mail.
It costs 43 cents to deliver a Social Security check by hard copy and just 2 cents electronically, Runyon observed. "Those economics are just too compelling not to drive change," he said.
In 2020, he forecast, "millions of Americans will be working at home in virtual companies and small home-based businesses. The Postal Service will provide them the means for conducting postal business electronically. The post office will be on their desktop and the full array of our services will be at their fingertips."
To help make that happen, he called for revision of the laws governing the agency.
A bill under consideration in Congress is a step in the right direction, Runyon said, but doesn't go far enough in freeing the agency to make its own decisions.
"What we need is less red tape and bureaucracy and more old-fashioned efficiency," he said.
Runyon's call for legislative changes came just hours after a proposal from one of his main rivals, Jim Kelly, chief executive of United Parcel Service.
Speaking at a Press Club breakfast, Kelly accused the post office of undermining its private competitors through unfair advantages.
Congress should change the law to make the post office subject to the same rules as private businesses including payment of taxes, following state and local regulations and being subject to antitrust rules, Kelly said.
