Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe to retire Feb. 1

WASHINGTON -- Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe announced Friday that he will retire on Feb. 1 after four years on the job. He will be succeeded by agency veteran Megan Brennan, who will become the first female postmaster general.

Donahoe, who has spent 39 years with the Postal Service, took over the agency during a serious financial crisis and oversaw a restructuring of the agency as it sought to deal with sharp declines in the volume of first-class mail.

"Pat was the calm in the financial storm. He ignored the naysayers and went forward with his team and built a comprehensive plan for the future of the organization, made tough decisions and executed against those decisions," said Mickey D. Barnett, chairman of the Board of Postal Governors. "That's a testament to the great team he built and his own personal leadership."

Donahoe's retirement announcement came as the agency reported a $569 million revenue increase in a fiscal year the year that ended Sept. 30, but an overall loss for the year of $5.5 billion.

Donahoe said there's still more to be done.

"The organization has a lot of momentum right now, and we're doing a lot to innovate and improve the way we serve the public and our customers," he said.

Brennan, the Postal Service's chief operating officer and executive vice president, told the board that being promoted to postmaster general is the "honor of a lifetime, especially for one who comes from a postal family." She will be the first woman to hold the job, according to the Postal Service.

As the COO, she oversees day-to-day operations for the agency, including mail processing, transportation, delivery and retail operations.

"Megan has led important initiatives to provide Sunday delivery services, improved tracking and greater predictability and reliability," Barnett said. "She has also been highly successful in rationalizing our mail processing, delivery and retail operations."

The agency has an about 491,000 employees.

The change in top management comes as the Postal Service seeks to cut costs to stay financially viable. Postal Service officials have pushed Congress to pass comprehensive legislation that would allow it to end most Saturday mail deliveries and reduce a congressionally mandated $5.6 billion annual payment for future retiree health benefits.

The Postal Service is an independent agency that receives no tax dollars, but it still is subject to congressional control.

Donahoe began working for the Postal Service as a clerk in Pittsburgh, where he was attending college.

"Working for a brand that touches every citizen of this great country every day has been a tremendous honor," he said. "It's always difficult to walk away from something you love and have a lot of passion for, but knowing that the organization is moving forward with a strong plan and lot of momentum makes it easier."

In November 2012, Donahoe told "CBS This Morning" that the Postal Service was facing "a fiscal cliff."

At the time, Donahoe said the Post Office's problems were two-fold.

"The situation is this," he said. "Number one, volume has dropped. People pay their bills online. So we lost about 25 percent of our volume in the last five years. Now our people have done a nice job taking costs to balance that out. The other issue we're faced with is we're required by law to pre-fund retirement health care for people who haven't retired yet to the tune of $5.5 billion a year. That's what's hurting us from a financial standpoint. So as the volume dropped, we have not been able to make this payment."