Roman Martinez IV served as chairman of the board of the United States Postal Service from 2022-2024 and as a governor until December 2025. He was previously a managing director at Lehman Brothers until 2003.
The United States Postal Service has reached a pivotal moment. Challenged by technological disruptions and constrained by outdated regulations, it is in the midst of a major restructuring plan to modernize operations, achieve service excellence and survive financially.
But to enable its transformation, the Postal Service urgently needs legislative and regulatory reforms to ensure access to critical liquidity and to undo costly mandates over which it has no control. Time is of the essence.
The complications started more than half a decade ago. The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 made the service an independent agency that would work like a private business, with a dual mandate of delivering mail to every address and being financially self-sustaining. But it’s now clear that the Postal Service cannot fulfill this mission using its historical business model.
Since 2007, the service has accumulated more than $100 billion in recurring losses that decapitalized the organization and were funded primarily by deferring capital expenditures, not paying mandated amortizations of pension deficits, and borrowing.
These losses were not simply the result of declining mail volumes because of the internet; they also stemmed from congressional mandates that prevented the USPS from working like a business as originally intended, and which have accounted for the majority of its losses.
