Last Month, Heitkamp Met with President’s Postal Task Force to Stress the Need for Legislative Solutions to Address Postal Service’s Challenges; In March, Heitkamp Introduced Bipartisan, Comprehensive Legislation to Stabilize the Postal Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp outlined her strong concerns during a U.S. Senate committee hearing about the administration’s government-wide agency reorganization proposal, which includes an extreme plan to restructure and privatize the U.S. Postal Service—an action that could endanger mail delivery and service across rural America.

Last month, the U.S Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a wide-ranging plan to reorganize several federal agencies, including a proposal to privatize the Postal Service— which Heitkamp pushed back on. The OMB report also included proposals to move the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food stamp program to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as well as move the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers out of the U.S. Department of Defense and into the U.S. Department of Transportation.

file photo: Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., left, meets with former U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe and current USPS Postmaster General Megan Brennan in Washington, D.C photo credit: The Dickinson Press

During the hearing, Heitkamp questioned a key OMB official on the analysis behind the broad reorganization plan, which was released with little information about how it was crafted, the amount of feedback received from impacted agencies like the Postal Service, or potential implementation timelines for proposed changes. Heitkamp also pushed OMB to forge a stronger partnership with Congress and to provide accurate, comprehensive analyses that allows lawmakers to judge the merits of these proposals and how they would impact businesses and families, particularly in rural communities.  Click here to watch the full video of her remarks.

“As Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management, I agree that the federal government needs to focus on improving the day-to-day operations of agencies while ensuring they’re efficiently using taxpayer dollars. But it’s also my obligation to make sure there’s transparency surrounding any proposed changes— including something as reckless and myopic as privatizing the Postal Service,” said Heitkamp. “If the Postal Service is privatized, rural America will be left behind— and the structural problems of the agency won’t have even be solved. Before releasing this plan, OPM didn’t consult with the Postal Service about its own future. That seems like a pretty major oversight, and it’s certainly not a way to respond to the actual needs of rural customers, letter carriers, or small businesses. Going forward, I hope the public will see better data backing up the other reorganization proposals, as well as a strengthened commitment to actually solving the Postal Service’s challenges and working toward bipartisan legislation that improves mail service and delivery for all Americans, including those in North Dakota’s rural communities.”

According to a 2015 Inspector General for the Postal Service report, North Dakota had the lowest decline in originating First-Class Single-Piece Mail volume in the nation from 1995 to 2013, demonstrating rural North Dakota’s continued reliance on the Postal Service to support jobs, schools, family farms, and businesses in rural communities. However, the Postal Service did not have the opportunity to submit a reorganization plan to OMB ahead of the announced proposals, meaning the potential impacts on North Dakota and rural America were not taken into account.

Following the release of the reorganization plan last month, Heitkamp and U.S. Congressman Mark Meadows (R-NC)— a longtime partner on mail delivery and service issues— met with the President’s new postal Task force to talk about mail service and delivery issues in rural America. During their meeting with the Task Force, both Heitkamp and Meadows stressed how a privatized Postal Service would jeopardize critical mail services for rural residents across the country and how the Task Force’s upcoming report must take that into account.

Heitkamp and Meadows also pressed Task Force members to work with both chambers of Congress to help pass a bipartisan legislative solution that adequately takes into account postal reform’s impacts on customers, postal workers, and industries dependent on affordable, reliable mail service. In March, Heitkamp introduced her bipartisan bill to improve U.S. Postal Service operations, service, and transparency. The compromise legislation would put the Postal Service — which processes and delivers nearly half of the world’s mail without using any taxpayer dollars to operate — on a path to financial stability and help prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout of the agency. Earlier this month, Meadows introduced similar legislation in the U.S. House.

Background

Hetikamp has continued to push for improved rural mail delivery and services in North Dakota and across the country, especially for rural residents the country who depend on the Postal Service for mail, prescription drugs, bills, and packages.

Heitkamp’s efforts to reform the Postal Service build on her Fix My Mail initiative, which she launched in 2014 to gather feedback from North Dakotans about challenges with their mail delivery and service. Throughout the years-long effort, she has heard from hundreds of North Dakotans about problems with mail delivery, and she brought those stories to the Postal Service to push for changes.

In 2016, Heitkamp launched her Fix My Mail survey to gather feedback from North Dakotans about challenges with their mail delivery and service. The survey was inspired by her original Fix My Mail initiative, which she started in January 2014 when she heard from more than 200 North Dakotans about their frequently poor mail delivery. Those stories prompted the Postal Service to take action in North Dakota, and at Heitkamp’s request, the U.S. Postal Service Inspector General issued a report confirming the problems North Dakotans had shared with Heitkamp.

Heitkamp’s work in the U.S. Senate to improve mail delivery and service issues for North Dakotans also includes:

• Resolving chronic mail issues in Fargo and Halliday. In January 2016, Heitkamp pressed U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan on severe mail issues in South Fargo. After reviewing the performance, the Postal Service brought in a carrier with 30 years of experience. At Heitkamp’s urging, the Postal Service announced in January it would reopen the Halliday post office. Since the day the Halliday post office’s was closed and on a near-daily basis thereafter, Heitkamp and her office pressed Brennan and the Postal Service to take urgent and concrete steps to protect mail service to the community.

• Bringing Postmaster General to North Dakota. After sharing her Fix My Mail survey results with U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan, Heitkamp invited the Postmaster General to visit North Dakota so she could see for herself the mail challenges that exist at processing facilities and to hear directly from community members and businesses about the solutions needed to improve their mail delivery and service over the long term. Brennan accepted Heitkamp’s invitation and in August 2016 visited a Bismarck mail processing facility and a Mandan post office with Heitkamp, and spoke directly with North Dakotans in Bismarck about the chronic challenges they face in accessing reliable mail service.

• Gathering feedback from North Dakotans to hold the Postal Service accountable and achieve results. Since Heitkamp launched her Fix My Mail survey in February 2016, she has received hundreds of responses from North Dakotans about specific mail delivery challenges – the vast majority of which contained personal stories about the issues they had experienced. Heitkamp relayed these challenges to Brennan and requested a prompt response to improve mail service.

• Inspiring change at the U.S. Postal Service. Inspired by Heitkamp’s Fix My Mail initiative and survey, the Postal Service launched a new customer service program aimed at improving mail delivery and service. The ‘Your Mail Matters’ program is encouraging North Dakotans to share their mail service challenges with the Postal Service via email, YourMailMatters@usps.gov, and a service line, 605-333-2648, which is managed and operated by the Postal Service District Office in Sioux Falls, S.D.