241 post offices remain on updated closure list
November 20th, 2009 | Postal Service | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
The U.S. Postal Service issued another updated list of possible post office closures (pdf) on Friday, and just 241 facilities remain, down from more than 3,300 when the review process started this summer.
Most of the proposed closures are still concentrated in a few states. Florida has the most, with 40; mail volume has fallen faster than the national average in Florida, largely due to the collapse in the housing sector. California and Ohio both have 26 possible closures; Georgia has 17; and Tennessee has 16.
The list still isn’t final. Postmaster General John Potter said last month that he doesn’t expect the closures to begin until at least January; postal officials estimate they will save between $20 million and $100 million per year.
Tags: John Potter, post office closures
RAT board not certifying data it’s not supposed to certify
November 18th, 2009 | Economic Stimulus | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) sent a letter on Nov. 13 (pdf) to Earl Devaney, the chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, raising some questions about the stimulus data posted on Recovery.gov. Issa was specifically concerned about the “jobs created/saved” data: The site claims 640,329 jobs have been created or saved, but there’s widespread agreement that figure is wrong.
Tags: Earl Devaney, RAT Board, Rep. Darrell Issa, transparency
One year later, no special counsel
November 18th, 2009 | Agencies Office of Special Counsel | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Something I’ve been wondering lately, both because Barack Obama the presidential candidate said a lot of good things about whistleblowers, and because I spent a not-inconsequential part of 2008 reporting on Scott Bloch: Why hasn’t the White House appointed a new special counsel?
I know President Barack Obama still has hundreds of positions to fill. But the top job at the Office of Special Counsel would seem to be an important one. The agency hasn’t had political leadership since October 2008, when the Bush administration forced Bloch to resign.
OSC employees I’ve talked to generally say the agency needs some reorganization, but William Reukauf, the acting special counsel, told me last year that he planned to act as a caretaker. Reorganization, in other words, would have to wait for political leadership. He told Government Executive in May that the agency is “looking forward anxiously” for a new political leader.
Tags: Barack Obama, Scott Bloch, whistleblowers, William Reukauf
5-day delivery: Depends on your perspective
November 17th, 2009 | Postal Service | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Daniel Indiviglio, writing on The Atlantic’s business blog, looks at the Postal Service’s gloomy FY09 financial results and declares 5-day mail delivery a “reasonable idea.” Then he looks a little further ahead — and predicts 5-day could eventually give way to even less frequent delivery:
Bottom line: it seems that technology will increasingly take the place of postal service in the years to come. This time around, Saturday service may be eliminated. But give it a few more years, and we might see Monday-Wednesday-Friday service. One day, USPS may be eliminated entirely.
Indiviglio casts that as a positive — the Postal Service responding to the changing way Americans use mail (and, increasingly, don’t use mail).
Interestingly, though, I often hear the same argument presented by union leaders and many postal employees as a criticism of 5-day. They view the end of Saturday delivery as a stalking horse for 4-day, 3-day, etc. And they see it as a negative, both because of its impact on postal workers and because they see it as selling off the agency’s competitive advantage. If the Postal Service doesn’t deliver on Saturdays, they argue, how does it differentiate itself from UPS or FedEx? (The mailbox monopoly, for one…)
Tags: 5-day delivery, The Atlantic
USPS posts $3.8b loss in 2009
November 16th, 2009 | Postal Service | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
The U.S. Postal Service finished fiscal year 2009 with a $3.8 billion loss — much smaller than expected — thanks to some last-minute congressional legislation and an accounting change.
This might seem surprising, if you’ve been following our postal coverage; the agency has been on pace to post at least a $6 billion loss for much of the year. But a law passed by Congress in September allowed the agency to defer $4 billion in payments into its retiree health benefits trust fund.
That knocked the deficit down to $3.8 billion, and allowed the Postal Service to pay all of its bills. (The agency would have run out of cash without the legislative relief.)
I’m talking in a few minutes with Joe Corbett, the Postal Service’s chief financial officer, so I’ll have more details about the financial report — and the plan for FY2010 — later this afternoon.
Tags: budgets, deficits, Joe Corbett
New OPM guidance on ‘burrowing in’
November 9th, 2009 | Agencies HR Management OPM | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
A quick heads-up, in case you haven’t heard: The Office of Personnel Management issued a memo late last week announcing a new policy on political appointees “burrowing in” at the end of an administration.
The memo, from OPM director John Berry, requires all agencies to get OPM’s permission before moving political appointees into career positions (at all levels). OPM previously required permission for such moves only during election years. The policy, which takes effect in 2010, applies to anyone who has held a politically-appointed job in the previous five years.
OPM’s reviews will be conducted by career employees.
“Burrowing in” attracted a lot of attention late last year, as it does every election year: Roughly 20 political appointees switched to career jobs during the waning months of the Bush administration.
Tags: John Berry, political appointees
A cybersecurity czar this month — maybe
November 2nd, 2009 | Information Technology | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
The president has been accused of “dithering” on his Afghanistan strategy review. (Personally, I think he’s right to take his time: Escalating the war is not an easy decision, and when tens of thousands of soldiers are being sent into combat, better to take some extra time to get it right.)
But that’s not the only important decision on which Obama has delayed. There’s also the question of appointing a “cyber czar,” a White House official to coordinate cybersecurity policy. Obama announced the new position in May, during a White House speech on cybersecurity, but the position has remained vacant for more than five months.
The delay is starting to attract criticism. Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., said last week that he was frustrated with the delay. TechAmerica, an IT industry group, put out a press release this afternoon calling on Obama to appoint a czar “at the earliest possible opportunity.”
Tags: Barack Obama, cybersecurity, Mischel Kwon, Rod Beckstrom
2009 intelligence budget: Almost $50 billion
October 30th, 2009 | Agencies Intelligence | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
How much does the (civilian) government spend on intelligence? $49.8 billion last year, according to Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, who released the 2009 spending figure earlier this morning.
That figure includes only the non-military intelligence budget. Blair said in a conference call earlier this year that the entire intelligence community budget is $75 billion — suggesting that the military intelligence budget, still technically classified, is about $25.2 billion.
Tags: Dennis Blair
Did anyone take the USPS buyouts?
October 21st, 2009 | Agencies Postal Service | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Are you one of the 18,000 people who accepted the Postal Service’s $15,000 buyout offer? Want to talk about why you took the deal? E-mail me. (Alternatively, if you didn’t accept the deal, I want to hear why not!)
I’m working on a story about the buyouts, and I’d love to include your stories. Glad to keep you anonymous, of course.
Tags: buyouts, early retirements
Recovery.gov and job creation
October 20th, 2009 | Economic Stimulus | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
I’ve probably made this point before, but it’s worth making again. There’s a lot of snark going around about the job-creation figures released last week on Recovery.gov. The conservative National Review, for example, jokes that the data shows an “embarrass[ing]” $533,000-per-job performance by the economic stimulus bill.
That $533,000 figure comes from dividing the total amount of money spent so far on contracts, $16 billion, by the number of jobs they created, 30,000. $533,000 is more than 10 times the median national income — so if it takes that much money to create a job, the stimulus bill must be wildly inefficient, right?
Wrong. The $533,000-per-job figure is wildly misleading, for two reasons.
Tags: job creation, RAT Board, recovery.gov