Postal Rates for Charities, Libraries, Newspapers Cut

WASHINGTON —  The Postal Service on Tuesday lowered the rates charities, libraries and certain newspapers pay for mailing literature--marking the third change this year for those mailers.

The new rate goes into effect April 20, just 42 days after the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction law cut the subsidy for the preferred mailers and forced the rates up, some as much as 20%.

The newly ordered reductions will be in the range of 1% to 4% below yet another rate that took effect Jan. 1.

For example, a three-quarter-ounce fund-raising letter, presorted by five-digit ZIP Code, will cost 7.1 cents to mail, as opposed to the current rate of 7.2 cents that took effect March 9. That rate was 4.9 cents prior to the Jan. 1 increase.

Although the latest reductions are tiny on a per-piece basis, total savings for mass mailers could be thousands of dollars.

The new rates take into account congressional action eliminating a taxpayer subsidy for newspapers mailed to addresses outside the county where they are published.

Those copies now will have to be mailed at full commercial rates, which vary according to weight and the percentage of advertising in the paper.

The money saved by eliminating that subsidy will be shared by the other preferred mailers.

President Reagan has proposed eliminating all $715.8 million in annual taxpayer subsidies for so-called preferred pieces of mail, such as church bulletins, charitable solicitations, classroom and farm publications and newspapers mailed to addresses in the county where they are published. Congress has not yet acted on the idea.