Taking action that is long overdue, the U.S. Senate on August 1, 2019 unanimously confirmed three new members of the USPS Board of Governors. Roman Martinez IV, John McLeod Barger and Ron Bloom will join David Williams and Robert Duncan and raise to five the number of sitting members of the Board of Governors. Both Mr. Martinez and Mr. Bloom have backgrounds in investment banking, and Mr. Bloom was also an official in the Obama Administration. Mr. Barger is a California attorney and the former director of the Investment and Retirement Boards of the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association, one of the country’s largest pension funds.

The Board of Governors acts as a kind of “Board of Directors” overseeing the USPS. The Board consists of eleven members, nine of which are appointed by the President and two of which are the U.S. Postmaster General (currently Megan Brennan) and Deputy Postmaster General (currently Ron Stroman). The new appointees will join current Governors David Williams (a former USPS inspector general) and Robert Duncan (a former official in the George W. Bush administration) on the Board. Four positions on the Board remain unfilled.

The new appointments mean that, for the first time since December of 2014, the Board of Governors has a quorum to meet and take action. Prior to reaching a quorum, the USPS had recently been overseen by an “emergency committee” that at times consisted only of the Postmaster General and her Deputy. The new appointments are critical to oversight of the USPS as it seeks to cope with mounting financial difficulties and encourage the passage of meaningful postal reform legislation.

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