Preventing panic. That’s the goal.

But we’re not talking about New York City or Cleveland last week in the wake of the country’s largest blackout. We’re not talking about the distribution of aid in Liberia after U.S. Marines landed. We’re not even talking about the California recall effort that calls into question the political system in the country’s most populous state.

What we are talking about is the location of post offices in Maine. Confused? So are we.

The Sun Journal has undertaken what, on the surface, looks like a simple, straightforward proposition: To get the address for every post office in Maine. Sounds like it should be pretty simple, but two weeks in and numerous e-mails and telephone calls later, we don’t have a list.

“I’m working through this idea of providing you a list. I think my overall responsibility is to prevent panic,” Gerry McKiernan, a Postal Service spokesman, told the Sun Journal.

Preventing panic?

We know they know where the post offices are. They send mail there every day. We also know that the address of postal facilities is public information. But alas, that’s where we run into trouble.

President Bush appointed a presidential commission to study the Postal Service and make recommendations on how to make its operations more efficient and to reduce a $92 billion deficit. The commission came back with a report that, among other things, suggests some post offices be closed. Sensing the potential fallout from post office closings, the report didn’t point out specific places. Instead, it suggested a Postal Network Optimization Commission. This group would study the postal system and construct a list of post offices for closing.

The list would be presented to Congress and subjected to an up-or-down vote, with no amendments allowed. The structure of the closing commission would be similar to the panel that decided which military bases to close. By forcing Congress to vote only yes or no, individual congressmen and senators would not be able to save targeted post offices in their home states. And thus, the theory goes, much of the political pain would be avoided.

The whole idea of closing post offices has the Postal Service in a dither. They’re being swamped by calls from people, especially in rural states, concerned that they’re going to see their local office shuttered.

That’s a long way off, and it’s easy to understand why postal employees might be a bit jumpy.

Sen. Susan Collins will hold a hearing Sept. 3 to examine the recommendations of the postal commission. The Governmental Affairs Committee, which she leads, has oversight of the Postal Service. We wish the committee luck because resistance to reform is monumental.

We would never support the closing of rural post offices on a whim, but anecdotally, we know of several cases in which multiple post offices are located within a few miles of one another and appear to duplicate service areas.

Post offices serve as a center to public life in many communities. But that does not mean every one of the more than 36,000 post offices around the country is necessary.

Hopefully, Sen. Collins will have better luck getting information from the Postal Service than we did. Otherwise, it’s going to be tough to develop a reasonable reform plan.


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