When Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) confronted Postmaster General and CEO David Steiner during a June 24 Senate hearing, Steiner said it was the first time he’d heard about thousands of pieces of mail dumped in St. Louis.
Steiner runs an agency with roughly 640,000 employees. Letters from Hawley and other Missouri officials had already raised delivery failures. The man at the top still arrived before Congress without an answer.
Hawley then turned to executive pay, saying Steiner received $305,781 in bonus compensation last year and noted that postmasters general collected more than $2 million in bonuses over the previous decade.
Steiner said the Board of Governors controls his compensation, but he wouldn’t promise to reject future bonuses while customers wait for missing mail.
The exchange became more insulting when Steiner laughed. He later explained that he was laughing at Hawley’s claim that Congress had given USPS everything it requested.
The explanation didn’t help much. People watching a hearing about dumped letters, weak service, and executive bonuses weren’t likely to appreciate the finer points of the joke.
It’s not just Steiner obfuscating and stalling, it’s also Doug Tulino, who Steiner praised to high heaven. You can bet that Tulino, who’s been around a while, indoctrinated Steiner in the postal way. Their problem now is that Hawley has gotten a taste of the postal way, and he apparently is going to push this to the max, as he should. Management at the USPS abuses employees, and occasionally each other, for sport. Steiner took umbrage at the way Hawley spoke to him when every day managers treat employees far worse. It’s getting apparent that both Steiner and Tulino need to go, and soon. Congress most likely would have not been happy to fund universal service at some level, but if the place was run properly and management was accountable and not so bloated, they would do it. The arrogance Congress has discovered, the incompetence and the unaccountability leads one to conclude they won’t get a dime. As long as Steiner and company are in charge, they shouldn’t.