Postmaster Spurns ‘Privatized’ Mail Idea

New Postmaster General Anthony M. Frank, on the eve of a postal rate increase, rejected as “nonsense” White House Budget Director James C. Miller III’s proposal that the Postal Service be sold to private contractors.

Frank, in an ABC News “Business World” interview taped for airing today, said: “I don’t think (the Postal Service) should lose money, and it shouldn’t make a profit, which means (it should) break even.

“Amazingly, that’s exactly what the Post Office has done over the last 10 years,” Frank said. “It’s broken even to the tune of two-tenths of 1% to the plus side.”

Opposed to Plan

When asked whether he accepted Miller’s “privatization” plan to break up and sell the Postal Service, Frank replied: “Of course not.” A recent government report to President Reagan suggested that a number of assets, including the Postal Service, should be sold to save money.

“It’s nonsense to say that we should break up one of the most efficient and least expensive operations in the world, postal operations, in order to make some zealot happy because he has an idea,” Frank said.

He said the Postal Service is and must remain the kind of function the government, regardless of profit, owes its citizens.

“But it’s got to be done efficiently,” Frank said. “We can’t keep raising the stamp rates every three years as we’re doing this Easter, so there are some constraints on us.

Service a Public Function

“We must do it efficiently, but if mail service isn’t a public function I don’t know what is,” Frank said, adding: “Why don’t we contract out tanks and bombers while we’re at it?”

Beginning today, it costs 25 cents to mail a one-ounce letter first class, an increase of 3 cents. The second ounce of a first-class item also rises 3 cents, to 20 cents. The cost of mailing a postcard rises a penny, to 15 cents.

Rates are also going up for most other classes of mail. The rates for sending advertising and periodicals are rising more than the rates for letters.

Frank said that if private contractors were franchised to deliver the mail, many people in remote areas where delivery is relatively expensive would not be served, similar to the way airlines have abandoned many of the less lucrative airports since deregulation.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” Frank said. “It’s one country and we’re bound together by 100 million addresses and we have 300,000 carriers that deliver to those addresses.

“Now, what should we do? Deliver to some of those addresses? Deliver some at some price and not at others? Deliver some on Wednesday? It’s silly.”