•The US Postal Service overreacted with its new plan to require “redacted” Santa letters. Because it would be pointless and expensive to cross out personal information on hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa, this effectively puts an end to a long-established tradition in Fairbanks.

Forget about making a list and checking it twice.

What makes no sense at all is the idea that the post office would continue to ship missives addressed simply to “Santa Claus, North Pole” to Fairbanks and toss them away here. The post office should dispose of them at the local post offices across the country where they are mailed. 

A single instance last year when a sex offender Outside volunteered to answer letters was unfortunate, but to cancel this entire effort is an extreme response.

As to the other action taken by the post office, the move to put the “North Pole, Alaska” cancellation on letters in the Anchorage post office instead of in Fairbanks, that’s another matter. That program is one that the postal service makes money on. The agency is already handling Fairbanks mail in Anchorage, so this makes sense.

I don’t think we should be too worked  up about any of this because the postal service is facing a financial crisis and its operations in Alaska require an enormous subsidy.

The bypass mail program, for instance, requires a subsidy of more than $100 million to Alaska. That deficit does not include the other expenses the postal people face in carrying out the mandate for “universal service,” under which rural states such as Alaska generate more expenses than income.

The subsidies will likely become a more inviting target for cost-cutters as the losses continue. Many villages and a significant portion of the Alaska economy would be endangered without the extra assistance provided by postal service customers Outside.

In July, the General Accounting Office put the post office on its list of “high risk” agencies in need of immediate transformation. Kids may be sending lots of Santa letters, but Americans are not using the post office the way they once did.

More and more people are going to electronic communication, which means that the business that has allowed the postal service to finance its unprofitable operations, such as those in Alaska, may never recover. The GAO said the service should be looking for ways to raise money and cut expenses.

The cost of bypass mail to rural Alaska will be part of that debate.

This week the agency reported losing $3.8 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, despite the layoff of 40,000 employees and other budget reductions.

It would have been worse without an accounting change, the Federal Times reported this week.

The newspaper said:

Congress allowed the Postal Service to postpone $4 billion in payments into its retiree health benefits trust fund — but the legislation wasn’t signed into law until Oct. 1, one day after the Postal Service’s fiscal year ended. The Postal Service asked the Postal Regulatory Commission, the independent agency which oversees it, for permission to count the savings on its 2009 financial report.

PRC approved the request last week, allowing the Postal Service to defer $4 billion in expenses, and reducing a deficit that was expected to approach $7 billion.

The final financial report will cap off a year of bad news for the Postal Service, which saw its mail volume drop by 28 billion pieces — nearly 13 percent — compared with 2008. The red ink would have been far worse, though, were it not for nearly $5 billion in cost-cutting measures adopted by the agency. Postal managers cut more than 110 million work hours in fiscal 2009, and the agency is under a nationwide hiring freeze.

Postal officials this week will also release a final financial plan for fiscal 2010; details of that report were not available at press time.

But several officials have said in recent interviews that the agency expects to run at least a $5 billion deficit in 2010 — and needs to cut another 100 million work hours to help balance the budget.