30-Cent Stamp Rejected; Issue Goes to Board

For the third time, the Postal Rate Commission on Friday rejected Postmaster General Anthony M. Frank’s appeal to raise the price of a first-class letter to 30 cents and, instead, offered to increase other mail rates.

The action by the independent rate-setting agency threw the controversial question back to the Postal Service’s Board of Governors. Under the 1970 law that established the commission, the governors now may impose the requested rate but only if all nine of the governors agree.

By offering the Postal Service $333 million a year in new revenue, spokesmen for two large groups of mailers said, the commission may have undercut Frank’s position and preserved the 29-cent stamp. Gene A. Del Polito, executive director of the Third Class Mail Assn., called the rate decision “detestable,” but he predicted that Frank did not have the votes to overturn it.

To make letter writers bear the entire cost of the rate increase would be unfair and unlawful, the commission argued. However, first-class mail would provide about $150 million of the added revenue by an increase to 24 cents an ounce from 23 cents for each extra ounce that a first-class letter weighs. All other classes of mail would share increases that the rate commission said would be typically less than 1%.