The postal service is after closing thousands of rural post offices. They plan to replace them with people driving trucks (aka RFD) who are, they claim, "rolling post offices."
Our village PO had the misfortune to be smoked out of its location in an 1870 store by a small fire, and despite being 157 years old and a constituent part of a National Register district, the bureaucrats are after it.
The decision was to close it (surprised?) An appeal has been filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission. Be clear: all the PRC can do is tell the USPS that their administrative record does not support the conclusion, and to reconsider it.
There have been something like six appeals which were upheld and sent back out of several hundred in the past five or ten years. You're better off playing the slots in Vegas.
At the moment ALL rural post offices are under siege. Redundant post offices in towns and cities are, too.
By USPS logic, closing rural post offices and saving $200 million the USPS will make a dent in their $4 billion deficit.
The Record
There are a raft of documents they're supposed to accumulate in the administrative record, which of course is public, prior to any decision to close a post office. According to the USPS "Guide" to discontinuance, the custodian is identified as the region's/district's Customer Service Manager. The Guide as PDF, here.
More under the schematic depiction of USPS administrative processes:
This will be a local issue times 4,000 all across America coming months. Here's my experience so far. (And you are unlikely to win this battle, no matter what. Just sayin').
You'll get a letter saying they are "studying" a closure.
You'll get a questionnaire -- a very poorly crafted one -- which tries to get you to conclude that a guy in a truck putting mail in your roadside box is just as good.
(Our post office meetings occurred before the recent inspiration that the USPS has been billing as the "village post office." Visualize buying stamps at the Kwik-Mart. You'll get a song and dance about a "village post office." Basically this is outsourcing USPS functions without USPS employees.)
They'll tell you how great the "rolling post office" is. Ask them how you get change. Ask them how you send packages. ("Leave them at the mailbox.")
They will have a "meeting" somewhere. You have the right to tape record or make a videotape of this meeting, even if it is in a post office.
(The nincompoops who ran the first meeting for the Still Pond Post Office gave people about 3 days' notice of the meeting; scheduled it in a town 15 miles away; set it for 5 p.m. and held it in a post office.
(They then told the local newspaper, "it's illegal to take pictures of make videos inside a post office." That is utter unmitigated bullshit. If they are having a meeting, your right to record trumps their policy. I know this because I followed this up with the officials in DC).
So in our case we got a second meeting.
Once the meeting happens the clock is ticking. They can make a "decision" after 60 days have passed.
The recording of the meeting is important because they generate an administrative record. The record consists of the presenter (a USPS employee) paraphrasing questions and comments from the audience and writing in the canned answers -- all of which are, in essence, "a rolling post office is just as good as far as we are concerned."
Have your comments ready, printed out, and hand them to the presenter. His job is not to accurately convey anything to his boss. He's there to satisfy the regulations about a meeting.
Have the presenter, at the end of the meeting, read aloud from the "minutes" or notes that have been taken. You will never see these notes and you do not know how they have interpreted what people in the meeting have said.
Have someone copy down the names of all attendees from the attendance sheet. This is public information. (The USPS people will try and tell you there are "privacy regulations." Again, this is bullshit. Their own sign-in sheets have a warning to whoever signs in that this is public information.)
Having said all this, you won't win. You can make it painful for them, though.
My advice in a nutshell is to request the administrative records concerning "discontinuance" at the earliest possible moment, and do not hesitate to involve your federal legislators ASAP.
(You will have to submit a FOIA request. No matter who you submit it to, as the "custodian of the records," the USPS will spend time forwarding it back and forth within their bureaucracy. They will also apologize for how slow they are because people have left, etc., etc.)
Your FOIA requests goes through the USPS Records Office. It will then be forwarded back and forth inside the bureaucracy. Oh wait, I said that.
You might even request it pre-emptively, that is, right now today, before anyone from the postal service sends you a form letter about a meeting about "alternative service."
Chances are the USPS will say you can't have the records because they are "pre-decisional." Once they're post-decisional, that is, the USPS has served notice they're closing your post office, you won't get them promptly.
You won't get facts and figures on the budget for your local post offices, or accurate data on what "savings" they project.
The contents of the admin record -- or the efforts to gether information for the record -- are described in an online PDF, "Guide to Discontinuance" "USPS-101," in Chapter 2.
Read also pages 8-12 for information on the contents of the record.
The only way you'll actually see the contents of the administrative record is to file an appeal with the Postal Regulatory Commission. By law, the USPS has to upload its entire administrative file to the appeal docket. I'm willing to bet that I see the admin record on the PRC web site before I every hear from the USPS about the records requested last March and April.
Important points to remember about dealing with the USPS:
1a. The USPS personnel you'll deal with have no idea what "FOIA" covers and doesn't.
1b. "Covered by FOIA" is code for "no, you can't have it."
2. The USPS will shuffle requests from office to office and branch to branch, even if you address the FOIA letter directly to the custodian.
3. The USPS has no idea what an "Expedited" request is, for even the simplest material.
4. Apparently, the way to get something handled is to call your Senators and Congressperson and raise hell. There is no such thing as "promptly" where the USPS is concerned.
5. Copy or photograph the attendance sheet at the meeting.
6. Ask the steno, at the end of the meeting, to read back the notes to everyone in attendance.
7. Beware the "you can't make recordings or take pictures of this meeting because it's in a post office" ploy. It's a public meeting and the public has the right to record.
8. You won't get satisfaction from the local postal management. Contact your Senators and Congressman ASAP.
In this case: according to Regional Operations Manager Bryan Landry, of Easton, Md., the custodian would be William Ridenhour, Balt. District Manager. Landry is the one who shows up at the public meetings. When he does, he doesn't bring anything from the administrative docket with him. In fact, when he showed up at a meeting in March -- which was improperly held, I'll spare you the details -- he had nothing with him. Zilch. Not even an outline of the "study process" or contact information for the public.
After an interval of several weeks, Landry announced a rescheduled meeting which would be held in the community's Methodist Church rather than at 5 pm in a Post Office 15 miles away.
Landry was asked for the administrative records for the Still Pond "study" and said he couldn't bring them to the rescheduled meeting b/c they were "covered by FOIA."
Landry was asked for the notes of the March meeting where he had someone taking down community questions. Couldn't give them out. "Covered by FOIA." I finally obtained his typed interpretation of the notes (entitled "Minutes") in Q&A format -- not the requested original notes on yellow legal paper.
I asked for the sign-in sheet. Can't divulge that. "Covered by FOIA. Personal information." That is, names and postal addresses. Unfortunately for Bryan, the USPS own guide says the signin sheet must be marked: "NOTICE: THIS INFORMATION IS PART OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE RECORD SUBJECT TO PUBLIC INSPECTION."
You may draw your own conclusions about Landry's grasp of his obligations under FOIA. Eventually, "Minutes" from the first meeting showed up. The attendance sheet is still lost in space. (I think I finally got it. By the time I did it was irrelevant.)
How to get the admin record? Anyway, the USPS FOIA page talks about an "expedited" FOIA request for reporters or in emergency situations; normal response time is given as 20 (working) days; they're supposed to tell you if they will give you expedited handling in 10 days. I guess that gives them 9 days to make something appear "expeditiously." I seriously doubt anyone I have spoken with so far even knew there is supposed to be an "expedited" process.
When can I expect a response from my FOIA request?
The FOIA provides that an agency will respond in writing within 20 working days of receipt of a request. If a request is sent to the wrong facility, the time for response does not begin until the request is received by the custodian of the records. There are unusual circumstances in which the agency may extend the response period for another ten working days. These include requests that require a search for records from a facility other than the one processing the request, requests that require the search for and review of a large volume of records, and requests that require consultation with another agency or with other agency components having an interest in disclosure.
Under what circumstances may I receive expedited processing for a FOIA request
A FOIA request will receive expedited processing under two conditions only. In one instance, the requester must demonstrate that the failure to expeditiously obtain the records could reasonably be expected to pose an imminent threat to the life or physical safety of an individual. In the other instance, the requester must demonstrate that he or she is primarily engaged in disseminating information to the public and that the requested information is urgently needed to inform the public about actual or alleged government activity.
The first meeting was March 24. After going around and around with the local manager for a while trying to get the notes, I decided that nothing was going to happen without a letter to the higher-ups. (All of this could have been easily avoided if he had faxed the eight or ten handwritten pages when originally asked, and been in possession of the records at the first public meeting he scheduled. None of this is Constitutional Law or Rocket Science.)
I did my homework and April 6 I e-mailed an expedited FOIA request directly to Ridenour for the admin record documents, on media letterhead, being a reporter and all and covering the story.
Shortly after, we heard that the USPS would reschedule its public community meeting for April 28.
I was then in daily contact with the USPS press office about the documents. The media contact, Yvette Singh, was not particularly helpful and apparently did not understand the USPS "expedited FOIA" concept. First the request was in the hands of lawyers. Then it was "in the process."
The "process" was to take a request e-mailed on the 6th and hold onto it until the 15th.
On the 18th I received a letter from DC saying they'd gotten my request from the Baltimore office on April 15.
I called. "Well, it's only been one day," said DC. (Actually, let's see, it had been 12 calendar days)
I explained it had been quite a bit more than one day, and that it was an expedited FOIA request in the first place.
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And so it goes. Members of the community have been in touch with Rep. Andy Harris' office, and Sen Cardin & Mikulski. I called the hapless Miss Singh to explain that I was going to raise hell until the documents were available and then called legislators' offices.
Miss Singh rerouted my call to a gentleman in DC and we had a nice conversation about the problems so far complying with a simple request. Either the documents are in a folder, or they aren't, and the USPS procedures indicate they should be in Baltimore, not in Timbuktu.
By the way, having submitted ANOTHER FOIA REQUEST forthe same materials in early July, it's August 2 and I still have nothing to show for it.