July 25, 2000 House Subcommittee on the Postal Service Re: U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Subcommittee, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Gary Eager. I am a member of the National Executive Board of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA), which is a voluntary non-partisan professional association representing exclusively the interests of more than 18,000 members who are federal law enforcement officers, and special agents from more than fifty agencies in the Federal Government. We are the largest such organization in the world representing Federal law enforcement. There are 1030 Postal Inspectors belonging to FLEOA which comprises 50% of our workforce. Broken down further, approximately 60% of the Postal Inspectors assigned to field offices belong to FLEOA. I serve FLEOA as the Agency President for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, elected by my fellow FLEOA Postal Inspector members and have served in this capacity for the past 4 years. I also serve as the National Chapters Director for FLEOA. I am a U.S. Postal Inspector working as a supervisor assigned to the Southeast Division, Atlanta, GA. I have been a Postal Inspector for more than 22 years primarily working street crimes such as armed robberies of post offices having been assigned to offices in Chicago, IL, Gary, IN, Cincinnati, OH, and Memphis, TN. Prior to becoming a Postal Inspector, I was employed as a police officer for the St. Louis, MO, Metropolitan Police Department. All in all I have more than 27 years experience in law enforcement. I am also proud to say I am a Viet Nam veteran. Seated with me is Richard Gallo, National President of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. Mr. Gallo is here to show solidarity and our association's total support for our FLEOA Postal Inspectors. FLEOA appreciates the opportunity to appear before you today to provide testimony on the feasibility of having the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, a federal law enforcement agency, separated from the U.S. Postal Service. FLEOA believes any discussion of this nature must include not only an overview of the current direction of the Inspection Service, but should weigh the Postal Service's move toward reform and/or privatization. 1 FLEOA's overriding concern is the issue of privacy and sanctity of America's communications and the future role of the Inspection Service. Distinguished members of this Subcommittee, FLEOA respectfully asserts that the Inspection Service appears to be having difficulty obtaining the necessary fiscal and personnel resources to fulfill its public service obligations. Although well intentioned, it appears that the Inspection Service is continually presenting a “value added” approach to Postal Service management in an effort to gain recognition on what we mean to the overall performance of the organization. Second, we are concerned about the perception from the private sector that the Postal Service has an unfair advantage over its competitors by having a federal law enforcement agency attached to it. Last fall, Ken Weaver was appointed as our new Chief Postal Inspector. We believe he is a capable leader and has the utmost integrity, but we are concerned that he will not be afforded the latitude to get our Agency back on track. I want to make it clear, we are not speaking on the Chief's behalf nor have we collaborated with any of his direct reports in bringing these issues forward The U.S. Postal Inspection Service, one of America's oldest law enforcement agencies, can trace its roots to Benjamin Franklin. We have a proud history of service to the American public and to the Postal Service. The men and women of the Inspection Service rank among the finest in the federal, state and local law enforcement communities. As a federal law enforcement agency we enforce over 200 federal laws relating to the fraudulent use of the postal system and U.S. Mail. The protection of the Postal Service and its nearly 800,000 employees are also core responsibilities of the Inspection Service. In addition, the Inspection Service has traditionally been a leader in areas of security and crime prevention. In 1970 the Postal Reorganization Act was passed by Congress which changed the Postal Service by defining it as an independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States. The purpose of the act was to improve the efficiency and the performance of the Postal Service in a growing competitive business environment. Since the Postal Reorganization Act the competition and technological advances have far surpassed what we believe was envisioned in 1970. The rise of major corporations and the advances in electronic communication via the Internet has and will continue to change the Postal Service. Accordingly, the Postal Service, like any business, is having to adjust to the changing business environment by prioritizing those program areas that keep the organization fiscally sound and cutting those Departments viewed as overhead. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service's role in the past has been the protection of postal employees and the mail; enforcing postal laws; personnel and plant security; conducting internal audits; and conducting criminal investigations. This traditional role abruptly changed in 1996 when the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Postal Service was created. The Inspection Service's loss of their Inspector General jurisdiction for the Postal Service changed the Inspection Service's priorities to criminal investigations supporting the concept of sanctity of the mail, security and crime prevention. The Inspection Service's loss of their Inspector General responsibility was primarily a result of a working relationship and a chain of command that was not providing the necessary oversight for the Postal Service as required and expected. The managers of the Inspection Service and those of the U.S. Postal Service were both aligned under the Postal Career Executive Service which promoted the perception that the U.S. Postal Service was being provided oversight by its own managers which in many instances proved to be true. The lack of independence by an objective Inspector General did not provide the mechanism needed for organizational accountability. Prior to the new OIG being established, the Inspection Service's priorities were consistent with the business needs of the Postal Service often -- times at the detriment of their public service obligations. The commitment to the criminal programs was adversely impacted by the necessity of the Inspection Service to prioritize its audit and revenue protection programs. The personnel resources allocated to the various programs reflected this commitment to prioritize those program areas deemed most important to the Postal Service, specifically those programs tied closely to its revenue. It appeared and many of us believe that the Postal Service placed greater value on our audit and revenue protection programs than they did on some of our criminal programs. This emphasis even became more pronounced from 1992 through 1999. After the OIG was established, the process of transferring responsibilities began which resulted in the loss of Postal Inspector positions despite the fact that no level of service review was conducted to establish a base line for Inspector positions. Crime rates, population studies, facility size, volume of mail, etc., which would normally be considered were not analyzed to determine if the Inspection Service could perform at the proper level of service to meet its public service obligations. The last level of service review was conducted in 1994, and was only selectively applied. Even this level of service review was flawed, i.e., it addressed the re-allocation of resources from an existing complement. The baseline for Inspector positions is and has been a business decision as opposed to a law enforcement decision based on the needs of the organization. We feel that if a proper level of service review had been conducted in 1996, it would have disclosed the Inspection Service was understaffed. For more than 20 years the Inspection Service has not been allocated a significant increase in personnel resources despite the increase in demands for its public service commitment. In 1975 there were approximately 1700 Postal Inspectors compared to an authorized complement of approximately 1900 in the year 2000. The Postal Service, on the other hand, experienced a significant growth in both employees and the volume of mail it handled. Inspection Service management continued throughout the years to prioritize and reprioritize programs and relied on a professional workforce that could do more with less. During this time frame, other federal law enforcement agencies increased in both allocation of personnel and fiscal resources consistent with their public obligations. The Inspection Service's growth did not parallel that of the Postal Service or that of other federal law enforcement agencies consistent with their public service demands. The only thing that can be said about our complement is that it is simply a historical number. Naturally, all local, state, and federal agencies suffer from time to time with resource needs, but they do in fact put forth an effort to identify what is reasonable and affordable and direct their efforts toward providing the best service possible. The FBI, Secret Service, DEA, and other federal law enforcement agencies have grown significantly over the past 20 years and clearly do not operate within a closed personnel resource budget. We submit our Government does not consider these agencies overhead. Most of all, they conduct some form of program management to evaluate and measure how well they are doing. For all practical purposes the Inspection Service quit program management in 1993, but did manage to re-allocate as many resources as possible to their revenue protection and audit programs at the detriment of many criminal programs such as mail theft, prohibited mailings, and mail fraud. In the 1999 Annual Report of Investigations of the United States Postal Inspection Service, our management system shows we are to align our activities with the Postal Service management system called "Customer Perfect." The Inspection Service aligns its goals with three main categories of the Postal Service: “the Voice of the Customer, the Voice of the Employee and the Voice of Business." I could go into great detail concerning establishing goals which are allegedly tied to the voices, but it would be merely rhetorical. The voices do nothing to address our resource needs. As previously stated, we simply re-allocate. Even given our displeasure with this concept being applied to a law enforcement organization, I submit FLEOA is simply acting as a Voice of the Employee. In December of 1997, the Inspection Service budget and other issues prompted FLEOA to conduct a survey among its Postal Inspector membership to get their input as to what they felt was the status of the Postal Inspection Service. Sixty-one per cent (61%) of the membership felt the public was not getting the proper level of service; seventy-five per cent (75%) indicated there was not enough personnel resources assigned to the criminal programs; seventy-four per cent (74%) indicated the workload was not fairly distributed; and seventy-six (76%) indicated that our position among the federal law enforcement community had weakened. Even though our survey accounted for only 25% of the work force, we considered the responses to be disturbing. The results were provided to former Chief Postal Inspector Kenneth Hunter. The partial results of the survey as identified above were also conveyed to Mr. Einar Dyhrkopp, Chairman of the Board of Governors, U.S. Postal Service, in a letter dated March 31, 1999. The letter expressed our concern that the monetary budget for the |