Members of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Accountability Committee met on June 17 to consider two presidential nominees for the USPS Board of Governors, amid dire warnings from advocates and postal workers’-union members alike.
The Postal Service’s Board of Governors operates much like a private-sector Board of Directors, setting the direction and the “exercise of power of the Postal Service”. It is required to act “in the public interest generally” and it appoints or removes the Postmaster General.
President Trump has nominated four people to the Board. Rather than the normal practice of pairing nominations on a bipartisan basis, he nominated four members of his own party: Anthony Lomangino, Jeffrey Brodsky, Rob Steffens and William Gallo. Their backgrounds are in hedge funds, fintech and commodities trading.
Despite the vital importance of the body in directing the Postal Service, the Senate committee’s agenda originally showed that all four nominees would be considered in one morning, as part of a group of 13 people nominated to a myriad of agencies. Committee Chair, Rand Paul, announced that two of the four would not, after all, have their hearings. We do not know when their hearings will take place.
This left just two and a half hours for senators to question 11 nominees. “An overcrowded lineup today severely limits our ability to have transparency for the American public,” warned ranking member Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI). He warned that one of the USPS nominees (Brodsky), had not even completed his financial disclosures and ethics agreements certified by the Office of Government Ethics.
The hearing started on a controversial note, as Sen. Peters asked Brodsky whether he would support privatization. The nominee evaded answering, stating: “I don’t really have a view on whether or not privatizing it would make any sense or not.” Brodsky went on to highlight some of the shortcomings of privatization schemes, especially regarding rural delivery.
Committee Chairman, Rand Paul (R-KY), argued that the workforce at the Postal Service was the problem, arguing that public employees are “not as good because they don’t have the profit incentive.” Gallo expressed his support for cuts to the Postal Service’s dedicated workforce. “Obviously the workforce, at over 600,000 people, is too high,” he claimed.
Short staffing has already caused delays in many parts of the country. The USPS is the largest postal service in the world, moving around half the world’s mail and operating in some of the most remote locations in the world. The unique service it provides to the American people, sustaining many rural areas, raises costs – especially labor costs – over many private sector competitors. The USPS universal service obligation guarantees that the service is available to all, which is why someone can mail a letter from Northern Alaska to Guam for the price of a stamp.
Following Brodsky’s earlier assertion that “we have to get together and talk about what the universal service obligation is and what it should be,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) pointed out the vital role that the Postal Service plays in rural areas. “It is absolutely vital to me that the Postal Service remain and continue its commitment to servicing all parts of the nation, including rural areas,” said the Missouri senator.
The nominees were also asked about voting-by-mail by both Peters and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI). “Should I have to get your approval as Board of Governor members to vote in my own state?” asked Slotkin, referring to the current draft USPS rule, produced in response to an executive order, restricting which states can use the USPS for vote-by-mail. “We will follow the law,” said Brodsky “and as far as I know, that’s not yet the law.” “…you have to have the courts and Congress make the decision,” said Gallo.