Former members of the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee’s open letter to Postmaster General Megan Brennan

No reasonable economist can make a convincing argument that the out-of-sight financial crises of the Postal Service can be fixed with 49 cent stamps. Postal Service marketers who believe that are dead wrong. Yet some do.

In our combined three-plus decades of service on the Postmaster General’s Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, we have seen an increasing emphasis on the part of a few senior Postal Service managers on assigning to the stamp subject and design program a burden it was never meant to bear: making a significant contribution to reducing Postal Service deficits.

Major reductions over time in its Stamp Services Office staffing and operating budgets have contributed to near-term but miniscule long term savings but at the cost of doing things to develop the program, communicate effectively with the public and support the committee as well as it should.

Certainly the ideas behind these changes are understandable, but at best they are not well thought out, and at worst, the Law of Unintended Consequences has operated to produce results that we believe negatively impact the program.

Over the last five years, increasing pressures for the stamp program to produce both savings and revenue have seriously derailed the program.

An Open Letter to Postmaster General Megan Brennan