Opinion ID: 184914
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Local Only Mail

Text: Finally, Niagara Telephone Company (Niagara) challengesthe Commission's rejection of Niagara's proposed separaterate for mail deposited in local only mail boxes located atindividual post offices. Niagara maintains that, because thismail is sorted by the sender, it costs the Postal Service less to deliver than other First Class mail and that this savingsshould be passed on to customers. The Commission rejectedNiagara's proposal because the record remains undevelopedon matters critical to a determination on the merits, such asits impact on net revenues. PRC Op. R97-1 at 345. We seeno defect in the Commission's determination. In Mail Order Ass'n, we upheld the Commission's decisionnot to establish a separate classification and rate, proposed byNiagara, for non-transported mail that never leaves thepost office where deposited but is placed directly into on-sitepost office boxes (specifically, utility bills Niagara sent tocustomers). The court reasoned: Even though 39 U.S.C. s 3622(b)(3) requires each class of mail or type of mail service to recover its attributable costs, that section does not require creation of a separate class of mail for every single cost characteristic. As we noted before, s 3622(b)(7) allows the Commission to consider the simplicity of the rate structure, and a separate rate for every group of mailers with special cost savings, no matter how small the group, would produce a hopelessly complicated rate schedule. This does not mean the Commission may always reject proposed cost-based classifications in order to avoid complexity in the rate schedule; in some cases the facts might be compelling enough to require a new classification. Here, however, given the complete absence of evidence establishing the existence of a substantial category of mail systemically involving lower costs, the Commission's rejection of Niagara's proposal was not arbitrary or a violation of s 3622(b)(3). Mail Order Ass'n, 2 F.3d at 426. In this case too there is norecord evidence to compel creation of the mail subclassNiagara proposes and we therefore conclude the Commissionreasonably declined to do so. For the preceding reasons, the petitions for review are Denied.