Georgia Lawmakers Demand Answers About Mail Delays; Set May 10 deadline
News release from office of Sen. Warnock April 12, 2024
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) is among Georgia lawmakers who are pressing top leaders at the United States Postal Service (USPS) about the implementation of the agency’s “Delivering for America” (DFA) plan. The action follows recent reporting from local news outlets detailing ongoing delays and disruptions in mail processing and delivery in communities across Georgia.
Introduced by USPS Postmaster General Louis Dejoy in 2021, DFA is a 10year plan designed to make the postal service profitable that includes consolidating key operations into a smaller number of large facilities.
In a letter to the Postmaster General, Warnock, U.S. Georgia Representatives Lucy McBath (DGA- 07), David Scott (DGA- 13), Henry C. ‘Hank’ Johnson Jr. (D-GA-04), Nikema Williams (D-GA05), Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. (D-GA-02) and Rich Mc-Cormick, MD, MBA (RGA- 06), addressed Georgians’ frustrations with the new Atlanta Regional Processing and Distribution Center (RPDC) in Palmetto, and posed a series of questions pressing for specific, transparent details about USPS’ implementation of its DFA plan: “So far, USPS has failed to live up to this standard in Georgia. Since the opening of the new Atlanta Regional Processing and Distribution Center (RPDC) on February 24, 2024, we have increasingly heard from Georgians about disruptions and delays in their essential postal services. As USPS implements changes to its network, USPS must ensure no Georgians, especially those with limited mobility options and urgent needs, are left behind for the sake of modernization,” said Warnock and his colleagues in the letter to DeJoy.
The lawmakers also demanded details about how USPS is working to improve mail efficiencies and delivery times, and how USPS is working to ensure that communities and individuals with limited mobility or access to transportation services will not be adversely impacted by ongoing operational changes: “Consolidating and centralizing USPS’s service network may be particularly burdensome for communities that cannot reliably travel to access essential postal services, including the 45 percent of Americans who have no access to public transportation and the one million rural households that do not have access to a car. As a public service responsible for delivering to every community in America, USPS must ensure that changes to its processing and delivery network do not create a barrier of distance and lead to a decrease in the accessibility or timeliness of essential postal services for any community in America,” Warnock and his colleagues continued.
Additionally, in a separate letter to the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) joined by Representatives McBath, Scott, Johnson, Williams, and Bishop, Warnock and his colleagues urged the watchdog office to expand its audit of the Atlanta RPDC, requesting a report investigating whether operational changes will disproportionately affect Georgia’s rural, minority, low-income, and underserved communities.
The lawmakers reminded USPS of its fundamental responsibility to provide secure, accessible, and efficient services to all USPS customers, a standard that USPS is failing to meet in the state.
This is the latest effort from Warnock to hold USPS accountable for its service to Georgians. In addition to supporting passage of the Postal Service Reform Act, signed into law in 2022, Warnock recently joined Senator John Ossoff and U.S. Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11) to launch a bipartisan, bicameral inquiry with USPS asking DeJoy to provide a detailed explanation for alleged fraud at the Marietta Post Office last year. Warnock and Ossoff have also worked together to conduct oversight of the Green County Post Office and investigate checkwashing facilitated through the postal service in Dunwoody.
