U.S. Rep. Mike Collins led a group of Republican members of Congress to Atlanta’s mail processing facility Monday in search of answers about slow mail delivery issues that have frustrated many residents and business owners for months.
The group left Monday learning that service should be improved in a couple of months.
“They feel like that this thing may be back up a little bit better in the next six to eight weeks,” Collins, of Jackson, said of the postal officials from Monday morning’s visit.
For several months now, state leaders, including U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, have been pressing U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for answers and begging for a prompt response.
Collins said he started getting phone calls about late mail in October. In December, he sent a letter to DeJoy requesting information about the delays.
Collins said he met with DeJoy in April, and asked if he could tour the Palmetto facility. The congressman posted on social media after Monday’s visit that he will be staying in touch with DeJoy.
“While metrics are moving in the right direction, improving transparency and communications between the USPS and our constituents remain top of mind,” he said.
U.S. Reps. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, and Andrew Clyde, R-Athens, also joined Collins on the tour, and added that on-time delivery should be fixed soon.
“Before this hiccup that happened here in Georgia, the postal system delivery rates for first-class mail was about 90% on-time delivery,” Clyde said.
That percentage significantly dropped once the U.S. Postal Service started implementing changes to its facilities. The changes are a part of the “Delivering for America” plan, which was implemented in 2021 in order to improve Postal Service efficiency. In May, DeJoy announced that he would pause the changes until 2025 in order to understand their full effect on service.
In April, during a Senate committee hearing, Postal Regulatory Commission Chairman Michael Kubayanda told members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that on-time delivery for first-class mail was being met only 36% of the time in the Atlanta area.
DeJoy said that those issues should be fixed in about 60 days — which is now less than a week away.
Ossoff visited the facility at the end of May, saying that leaders told him on-time mail delivery should be fixed this month. Ossoff said he would continue to apply “maximum pressure” to hold DeJoy accountable.
When asked about Ossoff’s comment about “maximum pressure,” Scott said it’s better to pay attention to results.
“Instead of maximum pressure and brow beating, I think it would serve us well to simply follow the metrics,” Scott said. “As long as they’re accomplishing the goals based on the timeline that they’ve set, that would be a win for the American citizens.”
Postal Service officials sent a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution following the visit, saying mail reliability and delivery are improving.
“Notably, destinating First-Class Mail Performance has improved by nearly 40-percentage points,” officials said. “While we are not entirely satisfied with the current levels, this positive trend indicates that the challenges we faced in March are being actively addressed.”
Officials added that the Postal Service shared with members of Congress that they are in the process of addressing years of negligent performance.
“The Postal Service briefed them on the investments being made in the Atlanta area to overcome years of underperformance and a chaotic local network of facilities and inefficient transportation that had been allowed to evolve over the decades in a reactive, but not logical or strategic, manner,” officials said.
Postal Service problems
Here’s a timeline of some of the interaction among Georgia’s congressional delegation about the issues with the U.S. Postal Service:
Dec. 13, 2023 - More than a dozen Georgia members of Congress signed a letter to the U.S. postmaster general raising these and other concerns with mail service.
April 16 - Officials say during a congressional hearing that on-time delivery for first-class mail was being met only 36% of the time in the Atlanta area.
May 14 - U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has agreed to pause the changes being made at some post office facilities until 2025.
May 30 - U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff visits the Atlanta Regional Processing and Distribution Center in Palmetto and says he expects timely results from the Postal Service to fix the ongoing mail delays.
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