U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin Calls for Postal Service to Postpone Closings

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin and a bipartisan group of her colleagues today demanded a delay in the planned consolidation of up to 82 U.S. Postal Service (USPS) mail processing facilities after the USPS Inspector General found the Postal Service failed to fulfill its obligations to adequately study the impact of the consolidations, and failed to inform the public of those impacts.

“We strongly urge the USPS to delay implementation of any mail processing consolidations until feasibility studies are completed and there has been adequate time for public comment and consideration of those comments,” the Senators wrote. “Completed feasibility studies should include service standard impacts worksheets based on the revised service standards expected to be published on January 5, 2015. There is no reason that the USPS cannot delay its consolidations to provide time for the public to see and comment on the service standard worksheets. It is only fair to allow the process to unfold in this way, and the USPS gains little by deciding to continue the consolidation process on its current, arbitrary timeline.”

The letter was drafted and circulated by U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and signed by Senators Roy Blunt (R-MO), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Ed Markey (D-MA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Carl Levin (D-MI), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Al Franken (D-MN), Bob Casey (D-PA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND),  Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark Pryor (D-AK), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Jon Tester (D-MT), John Walsh (D-MT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

In August, Senator Baldwin led a letter signed by a bipartisan group of 51 senators that called for a one-year moratorium on U.S. Postal Service plans to close mail processing plants and slow down first-class mail delivery. The letter urged leaders of a key Senate committee to include a one-year ban on mail delivery cuts as part of must-pass legislation to keep the government running into the new fiscal year that began in October of 2014.

The letter to the Postmaster General can be found online here.