November 19, 2014

The two most important functions of the Board of Governors (BoG) of the United States Postal Service (USPS) are to raise rates and pick a new Postmaster General. We all know that the BoG has been exercising its rate-raising muscles for some time, with annual Inflation-capped increases and the January 2014 exigent rate surcharge, followed by court and legislative actions to try to make the 4.3% surcharge permanent. With last Friday’s announcement by Postmaster General (PMG) Pat Donahoe that he plans to retire on February 1, 2015, the BoG got to exercise its second great power to select a new PMG.

From 1829 until 1971, the PMG was chosen by the President of the United States and served on his cabinet. Postal reorganization in 1970 changed the selection process to be performed by a nine-member BoG, the members of which are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. Megan Brennan is the 13th PMG to be selected by the BoG, and the 7th of those who was working for the USPS when they were promoted to PMG. The previous in-house promotions were: Benjamin Bailar, William Bolger, Paul Carlin, William Henderson, Jack Potter and Pat Donahoe. In fact, Megan Brennan is the 4th PMG in a row who worked their way up through the ranks as a mostly-operations specialist within the USPS. This streak follows the pretty disastrous term, at least for the operations of the USPS, of outside-hire Marvin Runyon. It seems that the collective wisdom is that it is best to have a seasoned operator at the helm of such a large, complex logistics organization.

The contents of the Alliance Report are protected by U.S. copyright law. The Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers grants its members a limited license to republish or paraphrase portions of the Alliance Report for non-commercial purposes only, on the condition that the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers is credited as the source of the material in any secondary use.