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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 152 / Wednesday, August 11, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
Postal Service has used Intelligent Mail barcode tracking specifically to evaluate the amount of inbound ballot volume that would experience a downward change and concluded that it was only 3.84 percent of such volume.
The Postal Service has already held briefings to discuss the changes with election officials to enable them to align their mailings with service standards and will continue to conduct outreach during and after any implementation.
Finally, none of the changes is specific to election mail or implicates the kinds of measures the Postal Service has taken during past elections to expedite election mail.
Before the PRC, the Postal Service explained how it has reasonably balanced the various 39 U.S.C. 3691
objectives and factors and the statutory policies set forth in 39 U.S.C. 101, 403, 2010, and 3661a, and the PRC
concluded that the proposed changes do not facially conflict with any statutes.
The service standards would enhance the value of postal services by improving reliability and consistency, while minimizing the tradeoffs in terms of lengthened service standards. This balancing of reliability, speed, and frequency is also consistent with reasonable rates and best business practices, both of which require efficient cost management, and with various other statutes that require a balance between efficiency and service.
Congress committed to the Postal Service the discretion to perform this balancing of numerous and sometimes competing policies. Other parties may favor one statutory policy or another in their own narrower interests, or may wish for a different balance amongst the various policies, but only the Postal Service bears the statutory responsibility of accounting for all of the relevant policies in weighing initiatives. In furtherance of this duty, the Postal Service has set forth a reasonable balance regarding these new service standards.
The States compare the operational changes at issue to other changes challenged in certain federal lawsuits from 2020, but this comparison is entirely misplaced. First, the substance of the alleged operational changes in those cases had nothing to do with either these service standard changes or their operational motivations such as the planned shift from air transportation to surface. Instead, those cases concerned alleged operational changes from July 2020, including alleged changes to policies regarding late and extra surface transportation trips and overtime, among other claims, particularly in the unusual context of
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the pandemic and the 2020 election.
The courts therefore did not review the Postal Services balancing of the various statutory policies in designing the thenexisting service standards, let alone those proposed well after the events at issue in the 2020 lawsuits. Second, the statutory challenges in those cases arose largely from procedural allegations that the Postal Service had not sought proper regulatory review of the alleged operational changes prior to implementation. Irrespective of whether such regulatory review was required in connections with those matters, here it is beyond dispute that the Postal Service formally sought precisely the ex ante regulatory review that litigants in those cases had suggested was lacking there.
To the extent those federal lawsuits have any bearing on this case, they merely support the process that the Postal Service has employed here.
The States mischaracterize the Postal Services motivation as seeking to favor package performance at the expense of First-Class Mail. That is not what the Delivering for America Plan says or implies; to the contrary, the Plan explicitly and repeatedly emphasizes the Postal Services intent to improve reliability for both mail and packages, not favoring the latter at the expense of the former. E.g., Plan at 6, 8, 24, 27, 30, 34, 40. Indeed, a fundamental goal of the Plan is to ensure the reliable delivery of all mail 6 days a week, at affordable rates, meaning the Plan fully recognizes the centrality of mail to the Postal Services statutory mission. At the same time, the States express concerns about the delivery of prescription medications; as noted earlier, however, such packages are not at issue in this rulemaking.
The States concerns about First-Class Mail used for their governments mailings to their own residents are unfounded. It is only reasonable to infer that a substantial proportion of governmental-to-individual mailings is mailed from somewhere in the same general region; indeed, the States admit that much of such mailings involves in-state mail. In other words, the likelihood that the service standards would lengthen the delivery time of these mailingsparticularly that any would now be subject to 4- or 5-day service standardsis low. Only between 1 and 27 percent depending on the state of 2-day mail in only 28
contiguous states would move to a 3-day standard; further, no First-Class Mail would actually shift to a 5-day standard for pairs originating and destinating within the same state, and Alaska is the only state in which some 3-day could
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shift to a 4-day standard for pairs within the state.
The States criticize the proposal as if its motivation were to degrade service.
It is incorrect, however, to suggest that, because the Postal Service has failed to meet service performance targets in the past, the proposal amounts to nothing more than simply moving the goalposts. It is not only rational, but critical, that the Postal Service take steps to address its longstanding service performance, operational efficiency, and financial problems, in order to provide the American public with reliable service through a financially sustainable postal system. This is the goal of the Delivering for America Plan, of which this proposal is a but far from the only critical element. The principal purposes of the changes are to enable operations to provide more reliability for customers and a more cost-effective network to help sustain the Postal Services longterm financial stability by shifting some volume from air to surface transportation. Similarly, for offshore delivery, the changes would enable a shift from air cargo to commercial air.
The new service standards balance promptness with reliability, efficiency, and economy by preserving current service standards for the majority of First-Class Mail and end-to-end Periodicals, and by tailoring the service standard changes to increase the use of more reliably prompt and cost-effective surface transportation. The changes will also enable other measures to improve the promptness and efficiency of the surface transportation network. These measures include modern methods of transporting mail by containerization, as the changes would allow the Postal Service to directly containerize trays where volume warrants. See 39 U.S.C.
101f.
Furthermore, most First-Class Mail would continue to be delivered within 3 days, and while certain long-distance customers would receive a service standard that is 1 or 2 days longer, they would be assured of consistent and predictable delivery within those service standards. For those customers who need faster delivery than would be provided under these service standards for their letters, Priority Mail Express and Priority Mail would continue to be available. See id. at e. Similarly, Priority Mail Express and Priority Mail will continue to rely on modern methods of containerization and systems designed to achieve expeditious, overnight transportation and delivery of important letter mail to all parts of the Nation where it is economical to do so. Id. at f.

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