Cycle of waste in the USPS?
- UPI's Capital Comment -
Postmaster General John Potter is coming under increasing criticism for what some have called the United States Postal Service's "exorbitant sponsorship" of Lance Armstrong's cycling team. Now, journalist Leonard Saffir has ratcheted the controversy up a notch, using an Aug. 16 column in the Lake Worth, Fla., Herald Press to make a Freedom of Information Act request. In an open letter to Potter, Saffir, who has covered postal whistleblowers for some time, writes, "I would like to know how many postal managers, spouses, consultants, etc. went overseas during the Tour de France to cheer the USPS team on. The information is for taxpayers, who have paid the bills and, accordingly, have a right to know. I don't want your business secrets, just the knowledge of how the USPS spent our money going to and in France." This request follows a "Media Expedited Request" made by Herald Press editor Patrick Parrish on Aug. 9. Supporters of postal reform on Capitol Hill are anxiously awaiting the answer.
Welcome to the Postal Spin Zone
USPS Response to Bad Press - Long on Spin and Short on Truth
Postal Service Vice President of Public Affairs and Communications Azeezaly Jaffer’s August 6th letter to the editor in the Washington Post is long on spin, short on truth and generally non-responsive.
Mr. Jaffer’s letter was purportedly in response to a July 31st letter to the editor from PostalWatch executive director Rick Merritt regarding questionable inflation adjustments the Postal Service used to inflate “EVA bonuses” based on nonexistent financial results. However, instead of dealing with the facts surrounding the questionable accounting adjustments, Mr. Jaffer embarks on a “spin-cycle” touting the supposed success of the entire EVA program as if some kind of twisted postal logic allows the ends to justify the means!
In fact, Jaffer’s only direct reference to the original EVA formula is completely inaccurate… His letter states, “The economic value-added formulas were not based on net income (emphasis added) -- the Postal Service is not allowed to make a profit, so pay can't be tied to income.” However, according to the glossary in the Postal Service’s 2000 Annual Report: “Economic Value Added (EVA): A measure of financial performance calculated by taking net operating income (emphasis added) and subtracting a charge for the capital used to produce that income (EVA = net operating income - capital charge).”
It is interesting that Mr. Jaffer mentions the Postal Service Office of Inspector General in his letter, for it was the Postal Service’s own Inspector General that said in a December, 2001 audit, ”Management used the inflation adjustment to increase revenues by $4.9 billion for fiscal years (FY) 1998 through 2000. This resulted in program participants earning $805 million in incentive awards for that period, while the Postal Service experienced steeply declining profits. Without the adjustment, economic value added, and incentive awards would have been negative.”
Postal spin not withstanding, postal management used Enron/WorldCom styled accounting sleight-of-hand to fabricate financial performance where none existed for the sole purpose of awarding more than $800 million in management bonuses. $300 million of which is about to be paid out in one lump sum to postal managers and executives while the Postal Service is running billion dollar deficits and owes the US taxpayers nearly $13 billion dollars.
It appears that it is Mr. Jaffer who has resorted to “verbal sleight of hand and Enron-styled deceptions” in a blatant attempt to protect his, and his fellow postal managers’ impending windfall.