SOX Compliance is Killing the Mail

Due to the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act (aka SOX) and its required implementation by the U.S. Postal Service, some small town newspapers no longer can provide same-day mail service. The Portales News-Tribune of Portales County, New Mexico was told recently their local post offices are not 24-hour business mail entry units and they could not accept the newspaper until 10 a.m.

Prior to that the publisher could deliver papers to the post office by 4 a.m. and they would be delivered the same day. Now, however, all local mail has left the local post office by 10 a.m., so their small circulation of 410 mail subscriptions won’t go out until the next day.

This change creates an additional delay for Saturday and Sunday papers, because they won’t be accepted for mailing until 10 a.m. the next Monday, and won’t be mailed until Tuesday mornings.

The newspaper contacted their regional postal office and was told the directive is mandated by Congress in all areas that do not have access to a 24-hour business entry facility.

To offset the delay, the newspaper has told their subscribers to call their circulation department and request a password to view the electronic edition of their paper online at no additional cost. (Editorial note: And the USPS wonders why the volume of mail is down. Stop the madness). Source: pntonline.com

Trouble Ahead for Tabloid Magazines

It may be time to bid farewell to the tabloid-sized American magazine.

A variety of forces have been conspiring for several decades to put oversized magazines onto the endangered-species list. Now the U.S. Postal Service appears ready to put the tabloid magazine (and catalog) out of existence.

Postal regulations scheduled to take effect on June 7th will impose significant penalties on magazines, catalogs, newspapers and other “flat mail” that fail a deflection test – commonly called a droop test. The rules are especially tough on skinny publications and tabloids, according to printers who have conducted extensive tests.

Mailers of tabloids are likely to redesign their pieces as quarter-folds to meet the deflection standards. This could mean more capital investment for printers and more problems for the Postal Service. Source: Dead Tree Edition

Accounting Error Saves USPS Billions

A study just released by the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) shows that the current system of funding the Postal Service’s Civil Service Retirement System pension responsibility is inequitable and has resulted in the Postal Service overpaying $75 billion to the pension fund. The OIG estimates that if the overcharge was used to prepay the Postal Service’s health benefits fund, it would fully meet all of the Postal Service’s accrued retiree health care liabilities and eliminate the need for the required annual payments of more than $5 billion. Also, the health benefits fund could immediately start meeting its intended purpose -- paying the annual payment for current retirees, which was $2 billion in 2009.

This marks the third time the Postal Service has been overcharged. In 2002 it was determined the Postal Service would overfund CSRS by $78 billion. Legislation in 2003 corrected this overfunding. Then it was determined the Postal Service was overcharged $27 billion for CSRS military service credits. In 2006 these funds were returned to the Postal Service by Congress, and the surplus was used to fund retiree health care liabilities. Source: Office of Inspector General

Did You Know

Although postage stamps became available in 1847, mailers had the option of sending their letters and having the Recipients pay the postage until 1855, when prepayment became compulsory. Source: ceol.com