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Little Rock - Jane W. Duke, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, announced the waiver of indictment and guilty plea of Andre Ben of Sherwood, Arkansas.

On January 29, 2009, Ben pled guilty to one count of theft of mail by a postal employee before Chief United States District Judge J. Leon Holmes. Ben faces a statutory sentence of up to five years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, or both. In addition, any term of imprisonment will be followed by up to three years of supervised release. A sentencing date will be set by the court at a later date.

According to the Information, Ben served as the Acting Officer-in-Charge of the England, Arkansas Post Office from November 2006 until May 2008. While in that position, Ben stole cash and money orders from the United States Mail that was intended for Charles Capps Ministries. Ben then converted those funds for his own use and benefit. The Ministry estimates that it suffered a loss of over $38,000. Specific loss calculations will be determined at sentencing.

Duke stated, “Theft by any governmental official is a very serious matter. But, when you couple this type of abuse with the fact that the official was stealing from a charitable institution, the conduct becomes even more egregious.” She added, “Our Office and the Office of Inspector General for the Postal Service are committed to aggressively investigating and prosecuting those individuals who abuse their positions of public trust.”

The case was investigated by the United States Postal Service - Office of the Inspector General. Assistant United States Attorney Karen Whatley is prosecuting the case for the United States.

The Postal Service yesterday confirmed that the decline in mail volumes and revenue accelerated in January. Total mail volume was down 16.3% for the month, compared with an 11.0% drop for the fiscal year to date. The sharpest decline came in Standard Mail, down 22.3% compared with January 2008. First Class mail was down 10.8%.

Because of last May’s rate increase, the 16.3% drop in volume produced a revenue drop of 11.8%. That’s still considerably higher than the 7.8% decline for the fiscal year to date. More worrisome is the fact that total expenses have barely dropped since last year- they were down just 1.1% in January, and year to date. Employee work hours declined by 8% compared with last year, but employee salaries and benefits payments dropped by less than a percentage point. Expenses for City Carrier salaries actually increased 1.5%, while “Other” salaries, which includes maintenance, administrative and support personnel, increased by 3.7%.

The filing also confirms that the USPS year to date operating defecit stood at $1.1 billion at the end of January, with eight months still to come in the 2009 fiscal year.

(The postal service cautions that the data in the reports is unaudited and preliminary. In particular, the statistical methods used for estimating revenue, pieces and weight are designed to be valid on a quarterly rather than monthly basis.)

The City and residents have long expressed significant concerns regarding the Postal Service’s plan to build a roughly 350,000-square-foot regional mail distribution center near homes, a religious facility, teen center, preschool, proposed affordable senior housing development and other vulnerable uses.

Citing the economy’s impact on the U.S. Postal Service’s finances, the Postal Service told the City it will not move ahead with plans to build a massive mail processing center in town.

In a Feb. 27 letter addressed to Mayor Donald Garcia, the Postal Service said that a nationwide freeze on capital spending has been instituted, nixing its plans ‘to proceed with the postal facility in Aliso Viejo or issue the Record of Decision on the Environmental Impact Statement at this time.’

Reports that the Postal Service is facing massive deficits that could force it to cut one day of mail delivery had City officials hopeful the Postal Service would scrap its plans to build a much-contested massive-mail processing center in town. The City and residents have long vehemently expressed concerns regarding the Postal Service’s plan to build a roughly 350,000-square-foot regional mail distribution center near homes, a religious facility, teen center, preschool, proposed affordable senior housing development and other vulnerable uses between 2A and 6 Liberty.

On Monday, city officials were elated but still cautious and reluctant about the Postal Service’s decision to not move forward. During the city’s drawn-out battle to stop the USPS from moving forward with its plans, city officials were told certain things by Postal Service staff that turned out to be false.

‘We were cautiously optimistic when we heard that the Postmaster General was calling for a suspension of capital projects due to the economic disaster the Postal Service found itself in, as it reported several billion dollars of losses over the past year alone,’ said Council Member Carmen Cave. ‘However, we were soon told that the Aliso Viejo project was ‘critical to the operations’ of the Postal Service. This announcement just validates our perception based upon our experience with the Postal Service and the way they have not been totally upfront with city staff or the people of Aliso Viejo.’

The following is excerpted from USPS OIG Report FF-MA-09-002:

Employees have made, and are continuing to make, imprudent and unnecessary purchases during a time of severe economic uncertainty in the Postal Service. While such purchases are generally not in direct violation of Postal Service policies, they conflict with the Postal Service’s objective of driving down costs in all operations and processes. Moreover, the public’s view of such imprudent purchases could have a detrimental effect on the Postal Service’s public image due to the perception that the
agency is using funds from sales of stamps to purchase expensive items.

Imprudent Purchases Made by Postal Service Employees

Employees have made purchases, primarily gifts and items for meetings, which we believe are imprudent and unnecessary during a time of severe economic uncertainty in the Postal Service. In a recent report on the Postal Service’s progress in the areas of network strength, realignment planning, accountability, and improved communication, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) stated the Postal Service “must increase efficiency and decrease costs across all its operations” in order to respond to declining mail volumes. In addition, the Vice President, Controller, has directed employees to “continue efforts to control expenses” by making “prudent choices and deferring or eliminating non-critical activity.” Some examples of imprudent purchases we identified follow.

Employees put these purchases into the eAwards System (eAwards):

1. Electronic and household items such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS), navigational systems, video game consoles, camcorders, digital cameras, personal computers, printers, an espresso machine, and a TiVo® system given as employee awards/recognition, purchased in late fall 2007, and costing a total of $93,234.

2. Thirteen 23-inch high-definition televisions given as employee awards, purchased in fall 2007, and costing $6,435.

3. Three designer watches given as employee awards, purchased in fall 2007, and costing $4,370.

Employees did not put these purchases into eAwards:

4. Carnival type games and amusements for an employee appreciation and family day event, purchased in fall 2007, and costing $7,995. Cardholders are not required to put purchases related to employee appreciation into eAwards.

5. A 2-day year-end meeting held in November 2007 by one area costing $26,884, including the cost of breakfast, lunch, and dinner; meeting rooms; audio-visual equipment; and incidentals such as baggage handling and gratuities for 60 people. The purchase included lodging for 14 attendees whose duty station was less than 50 miles from the meeting place. Cardholders were not required to put these purchases into eAwards since this was a business meeting and not an employee recognition award event.

6. Tickets for sporting events, purchased in late fall 2007 and winter 2008, costing a total of $28,498. These purchases included a professional basketball game that 450 employees attended and where they received food and hats, and season tickets for a major league baseball team. Cardholders were not required to put these purchases into eAwards because the per ticket cost was less than $50.

We found the documentation supporting the purchases listed above and others did not always provide sufficient detail to identify the number of items purchased, the number of people attending events or recognized for awards, or the specific purpose or reason for the purchase. Without extensive testing, it is not possible for management or the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) to determine the extent to which some of these purchases (i.e., events) occur because they are not always tracked separately.

Items of value – such as GPS and navigational systems, electronic appliances, watches and gift cards – are captured in eAwards. Some of the purchases we identified – tickets to sporting events, business meetings and appreciation days – are associated with recognition or events; therefore, they are not required to be put into eAwards. As cited in a recent OIG report, expenses associated with internal and external events (meals, refreshments, employee recognition gifts, gift cards, et cetera) should be separately tracked to facilitate transparency and accountability.

In addition to the types of purchases noted above, we identified spending for food and meals made using Purchase Cards totaling over $7 million in FY 2008. However, we did not include specific examples in our report, as the Postal Service recognized the need to strengthen its policy in this area and recently issued a management instruction that provides additional guidance. The Postal Service travel policy states that anyone in travel status must deduct all meals provided from their per diem expense. Managers told us that meals are provided only under specific circumstances, often to
ensure that people in travel status are available for a meeting for the maximum amount of productive time. We plan to continue to monitor these purchases throughout FY 2009 to determine whether the new management advisory is effective.

Although most of the purchases we tested were not in violation of Postal Service purchasing procedures, the nature of the purchases is in direct conflict with the Postal Service’s objective of driving down costs in all operations and processes. In addition, due to the perception that the Postal Service is using funds from stamp sales to purchase expensive items, this kind of imprudent spending could damage the Postal Service’s public image (goodwill). Both managers and those with awards approval authority should consider the costs of the awards and the perception of these awards to
outside individuals. The imprudent purchases we identified represent items of value that are above and beyond employee salaries and bonuses.

We believe a reduction in purchases is feasible based on our analysis of Purchase Card data from October 2006 through September 2008. In fact, chart 1 shows that in Quarter 4, FY 2008, purchases decreased to an average of $24 million per month, down from an average of nearly $32 million per month for the first 9 months of FY 2008. We believe this is due to a recent emphasis on cost cutting, and further reductions are possible to realize additional cost savings by emphasizing the need to limit the amount of spending on non-cash items.

UPS has expanded its early morning delivery territory in the United States by almost 3,000 new ZIP Codes, an increase that brings to more than 23,000 the number of ZIP Codes with guaranteed early morning delivery service.

The increase in coverage area for UPS Next Day Air® Early A.M.® means that UPS now delivers early - by 8:30 a.m. - to more businesses and ZIP Codes than any other transportation carrier. In addition, UPS delivers overnight by 10:30 a.m. to more businesses and ZIP Codes than anyone.

With the increase, more than 80 percent of U.S. businesses can receive early morning deliveries, which arrive up to two hours before UPS’s regular guaranteed overnight service at 10:30 a.m. In some areas, arrival time can be guaranteed as early as 8 a.m.

“Early morning delivery is crucial for customers who have urgent deadlines or critical shipments across time zones, from hospitals needing supplies in time for morning surgeries to lawyers needing signed documents for legal proceedings,” said Dale Hayes, UPS’s vice president of U.S. marketing. “Offering more early morning service choices is a fundamental way that UPS is meeting customer needs.”

UPS was the first express carrier to offer early morning delivery service nearly 13 years ago, responding to customers with expanding infrastructures and more complex supply chains as well as more widely dispersed workforces and customers. Saturday service also is available to certain destinations.

A complete list of the UPS Next Day Air Early A.M. ZIP Codes is available on UPS.com. Plans are underway to offer the service to even more ZIP Codes later this year.

Columbia, South Carolina - United States Attorney W. Walter Wilkins stated today that Diane T. Williams, age 38, of Lamar, South Carolina, was indicted for theft by a postal employee. Federal officials allege that Williams stole postal funds while working at the Hartsville Post Office from June 2007 to June 2008.

The maximum penalty Williams could receive is a fine of $250,000.00 and imprisonment for 10 years.
Mr. Wilkins stated that the case was investigated by agents of the United States Postal Service and that he has assigned the case to Assistant United States Attorney William E. Day, II of the Florence office for prosecution.

From the NALC Bulletin:

Let Let me make the following clear to one and all, including Postal Service management at headquarters and in the field, and all letter carriers, at every level in the union and in every post office: No one, at any level, has any authority to amend or violate the national contract, period.

I continue to receive calls from branch officers who inform me that local managers have approached them and attempted to secure agreements to violate the national contract. These same managers have the audacity to suggest that I am cooperating with the Postal Service and that they should, too!

The plain fact is that I encourage cooperation with the Postal Service because I realize the current financial crisis requires cooperation, where appropriate.

If any manager approaches you with a suggestion for creative ooperation, advise them to send their ideas to USPS headquarters, which will then make the determination whether to present such ideas to us. Some of the ideas floating around now are not grounded in common sense. For example, the idea of prohibiting all carriers from working their nonscheduled day off, and then requiring non-ODL carriers to work overtime is a clear violation of the contract – one we will stop through the grievance procedure, and one that will cost the USPS dearly in the end. We must be mindful of the critical difference between contract amendment/contract violation on the one hand, and creative, positive cooperation on the other.

The U.S. Census Bureau has released American Community Survey
(ACS) data products in the form of 1year estimates for 2005, 2006, and
2007, and 3year estimates for the period of 20052007. Annual updates
of these products are planned. Specifically, in 2009 and 2010, the
Census Bureau will publish 1year estimates for the 2008 ACS and the
2009 ACS, and 3year estimates for the 20062008 ACS and 20072009 ACS,
respectively. Beginning in late 2010, the Census Bureau plans to
introduce 5year data products covering the period of 20052009. The
Census Bureau is proposing to modify its current line of data products
to accommodate the 5year estimates and is requesting comments from
current and potential users of ACS data products to help guide this
modification. The release of the 5year estimates will achieve a goal
of the ACS to provide small area data similar to the data published
after Census 2000, based on the longform sample. Plans for the
production of an ACS Summary File for race, ethnic origin, ancest

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