The Postal Regulatory Commission is seeking actuarial expertise to evaluate the postal service’s liability for some of its employee’s civil service pensions. The USPS sought the PRC’s advice after the agency’s Inspector General found that the postal service had been overcharged by as much as $75 billion since 1971 for its share of the pensions for former Post Office Department employees.

The PRC’s solicitation suggests that it wants compare the USPS’s situation with the way a corporation would handle pension liabilities when it divests itself of a subsidiary:

• Provide an assessment of how an allocation would be structured if all parties had negotiating power similar to that involved in acquisitions in the private sector

• As applicable, provide recommendations typically made in similar situations for estimating the allocation of pension liability between a parent company and subsidiaries, particularly if those subsidiaries are divested

The USPS is seeking the PRC’s opinion under the postal reform act passed in 2006, which provides for PRC review of the “fairness and equity” of USPS obligations. PRC agreement that the USPS was indeed overcharged would lend the service considerable moral support. Actually getting the money back, of course, is a different matter.

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