The U.S. Postal Service has some explaining to do.

I soon will be talking with U.S. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe in Washington. I’ll have hard questions about the ill-conceived decision to close the mail-processing facility in Duluth, one of the finest and most efficient in the nation.

Make no mistake. We are continuing to fight this tooth and nail. Here, for starters, are the questions on my list:

• One, what will happen to the 70 or more good-paying jobs this closing would affect? And why were no new public meetings scheduled before a final decision was made? The first and only public meeting on the proposed closing was held more than 2½ years ago on Nov. 10, 2011. One meeting is hardly sufficient to gather important, up-to-date information from postal customers, postal workers and local officials. If Postal Service officials won’t hold another public meeting, I will hold one myself and invite them to participate.
• Two, while being considered for closure, the Duluth facility nonetheless had to hire 17 clerks, three maintenance employees and several mail handlers to keep up with an ever-increasing workload. So how can it be argued the Duluth facility is no longer necessary?
• I recently toured the Duluth mail facility and saw for myself how highly skilled workers operate state-of-the-art equipment at peak demand. People are working hard to keep up, and they’re doing a tremendous job.
• Three, isn’t it really the unnecessary, $5.5 billion annual burden of prefunding 75 years of future retiree health benefits that’s causing the USPS its financial woes — and not efficient sorting centers like the one in Duluth? Of course it is. Without that requirement that the Bush Administration insisted on in 2006, the Postal Service would have made a $623 million profit last year and would be on track toward a $1 billion profit this year. The future retiree health fund now has $50 billion in it. That’s enough. Some 180 of my colleagues have joined me in cosponsoring the bipartisan Postal Service Protection Act (H.R.630) to remove the prefunding requirement. Now the Postal Service itself needs to weigh in with us and urge Speaker of the House John Boehner to allow a vote on this critical legislation. Get this done and the U.S. Postal Service will be profitable again.
• Four, how is efficiency served and money saved by sending local mail on an overnight (or longer) trip to St. Paul to be sorted? How much extra fuel will be wasted? How much longer will it take for a simple letter to get from point A to point B? If the Duluth facility closes, a letter from one Duluth address to another Duluth address will travel 150 miles to St. Paul just to be processed — and then will have to be shipped back to Duluth to be delivered. The same goes for Grand Marais, Babbitt, Ely, Grand Portage, Virginia and every other community in our region. That would be a ridiculous and shameful waste of time, money and fuel.
• Finally, five, here in Minnesota, we have a long and troublesome season called winter. How can we be guaranteed essential mail service won’t be delayed in bad weather as our mail journeys back and forth to St. Paul? The fact is the Postal Service can’t promise any such thing. When you live and work in Washington, D.C., as these decision-makers do, ice and snow pose only an occasional nuisance. They have no idea how long a trip between Duluth and points north to St. Paul and back can take in a blizzard or ice storm. I intend to explain, pointing out the unintended consequences weather can bring in our part of the country.

Keeping the Duluth postal facility open is going to be a tough fight; and Sen. Al Franken, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and I are ready for it. We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to get this decision overturned.

Congressman Rick Nolan (D-Minnesota)