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The Summertime Postal Snowball

The Summertime Postal Snowball
By Bob Levi
NAPS Director of Legislative & Political Affairs

Approximately a year ago, about two dozen members of Congress began to detect serious problems relating to the Postal Service’s self-heralded “Delivering for America” (DFA) plan. They took notice of how the emerging postal facility consolidations and realignments would impact the essential postal services enjoyed by their constituents. Mail disruption and delay became a hallmark of the initiative.

Over the course of the ensuing months, their fears were realized. A surging number of their congressional colleagues expressed outrage about the deteriorating quality and timeliness of mail deliveries resulting from the DFA initiative. They demanded answers from L’Enfant Plaza, but the correspondence went unanswered or elected officials were sent a form response that did not address specific concerns.

Like a snowball rolling downhill, Capitol Hill concern has increased exponentially, gathering mass and weight, evolving into an avalanche of criticism. The initial and well-founded concern developed into a major political force that may define the Postal Service and its relationship with postal policymakers on and off Capitol Hill for years to come.

By the July 4th Recess, at least a dozen bills in both the House and Senate, with growing lists of bipartisan cosponsors, were introduced to roll back or, at the very least, halt DFA-related operational changes. Two months ago, I wrote about the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing at which the Postal Service conceded that DFA implementation did not go according to plan; Postmaster General Louis DeJoy felt it necessary to apologize to the committee for the DFA’s negative impact on service.

Nevertheless, Chairman Gary Peters (D-MI) continues his call for the Postal Board of Governors to seek a Postal Regulatory Commission Advisory Opinion on the DFA. Pending that PRC opinion, Peters strongly advised the Board of Governors to suspend further consolidation and realignment implementation—even those that are in the pipeline, including the large regional processing and delivery centers. Even House and Senate apologists for the USPS initiative seem to have soured on the plan.

In late June, the House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), issued a report that accompanied the Fiscal Year 2025 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill, which reflected deep trouble about the DFA’s impact on the national mail system. The appropriations subcommittee with authority over the Postal Service is chaired by Rep. David Joyce (R-OH) who was intimately involved with drafting the report.

In part, the committee report stated that it is “deeply concerned about potential negative impacts on the mail service to the American people, customer satisfaction, and cost overruns… [and] with the USPS’ aggressive approach to consolidating processing and distribution centers.”

The committee concluded that it “encourages the USPS to halt any realignment, consolidation or partial consolidation of processing or logistics facilities that provide services to postal districts that, at any point over the past calendar year, have failed to meet 93% on-time performance for two-day single-piece First-Class mail and 90.3% on-time delivery performance for three- to five-day First-Class mail.”

The committee also directed the USPS to provide an analysis on the impact of closing processing facilities on mail delivery times and standards across the country. In addition, the appropriations panel instructed the USPS Office of Inspector General to investigate problems with outgoing and incoming mail at processing and distribution centers and mail annex-es across the nation.

The Appropriations Committee also called attention to the dramatic escalation in postal-related crime and the safety of USPS employees. Cole’s committee urged the Postal Service “to remove restrictions implemented in 2020 preventing postal police officers from fully executing their duty to ensure public safety and mail security, and protect postal assets within the nation’s mail system, whether on postal property or beyond the perimeter of postal property.”

These committee comments underscore the necessity of S. 3356 and H.R. 3005, the Senate and House version of the Postal Police Reform Act. Finally, the committee directed the Postal Service to brief the committee on USPS staffing shortages and how these deficiencies affect performance.

The snowball did not remain on Capitol Hill. It rolled about two miles west to the Postal Regulatory Commission. In early July, the commission issued its comprehensive analysis of Fiscal Year 2023 Postal Performance and the Fiscal Year 2024 Performance Plan. In sum, the PRC concluded the Postal Service failed to meet six of its eight public performance indicators for “High-Quality Service,” which measures on-time delivery for mail and packages.

The commission identified lower performance suffered in areas where the USPS has implemented DFA initiatives. Lack of transparency was another critique of the rollout. The PRC also expressed concern over the USPS’ decision to continue to implement regional processing and distribution centers, local processing centers and sorting and delivery centers, instead of suspending the activities to conduct a comprehensive study of their effect on performance.

Moreover, the regulatory agency opened an inquiry into the accuracy and reliability of the USPS’ internal performance system. The law requires accuracy and reliability in performance measurement. In the past, IBM was under contract with the USPS to conduct independent studies to measure postal performance.

Hopefully, over the month of August, the massive snowball rolling around Washington will begin to melt as the Postal Service remedies the service failures it has brought on itself in the recent past and Congress reclaims the high ground in addressing postal issues.