Virus gives agency crisis it can ill afford

Postal Service’s budget put under added strain

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service’s famous motto, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers,” is being tested like never before, by challenges that go well beyond the weather.

The novel coronavirus has devastated its finances. The agency’s responsibilities, meanwhile, are mounting. A dramatic shift in many states to voting by mail is intended to protect voters from spreading the virus at polling places. But it’s also making more work for post offices and contributing to delays in determining election winners.

Election results have been delayed this week in Kentucky and New York because both states were overwhelmed by huge increases in mail ballots.

“What we don’t need is more chaos in the chaos,” said Wendy Fields, executive director of the voting rights advocacy group the Democracy Initiative.

President Donald Trump opposes expanding voting by mail, asserting that it will trigger fraud, even though there’s no evidence that will happen.

Trump has acknowledged larger political calculations are at work, tweeting that expanding vote by mail will “LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY.”

Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents 200,000-plus employees, said the administration is “shamefully trying to use the crisis to carry out an agenda” of privatization, which would ultimately “break up the Postal Service and sell it.”

Neither side will say publicly what’s being negotiated, but Trump has made his feelings clear. A 2018 Treasury task force also recommended that the Postal Service increase package rates and cut labor costs.

A second coronavirus aid package passed in May by the Democratic-controlled House includes $25 billion in direct aid for the Postal Service, but the GOP-majority Senate hasn’t approved its own version.

Jacquelyn Martin The Associated Press Paul Falcon unloads a custom-made box Tuesday on Capitol Hill in Washington that was said to hold 2 million signed petitions from postal customers for emergency funding for the Postal Service. Congress is being urged to invest $25 billion to help the Postal Service.