Senators demand Postal Service delay consolidation of mail processing facilities after Inspector General’s report indicates lack of transparency, inadequate impact studies, failure to properly inform public
(December 1, 2014) WASHINGTON – Missouri U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt, along with a bipartisan group of Senate 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 fulfil 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, available HERE, was also signed by Senators Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken of Minnesota, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Jon Tester and John Walsh of Montana, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
I have said it before and I will say it again if Congress just orders the PSPHBP to be reevaluated using the current number of employees working for the postal service then they would see that the prepayments are already equal to what they would owe for the next 75 yrs. Staffing is almost half of what it was in 2006 and it is highly unlikely that they will higher more then they have now in the future. Minus the 5.5 billion a year and we are making a profit so goodbye closures we are back in black.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/101
Everything Corporate is doing today, using PAEA/PSRHBP as a pretext to declare a ‘financial crisis’ starting three years ago, is a felony crime according to federal law as it currently reads.
Donahoe shouldn’t be getting a golden parachute, he should be getting locked behind iron bars.
Congress URGING the PO to do something has does much as if the sent you a letter URGING your bowels to move. Both will do as they damn well please!
They are only blowing smoke up people asses. The real problem is changing delivery standards which they do NOT address. If delivery standards are not changed then the plants can’t be closed. It is that simple.
One Republican and one Independent and twenty eight Democrats…Hardly Bi-Partisan!
Thanks for helping
Contractors drives the postal management, ask them
they are only union busting to line their own pockets…..treason.
HA HA!!..Diane Feinstein,who signed this letter and is making a few hundred million off the sale of Post Offices and facilities through her husband Dick Blum’s no bid contract must know management will ignore this and unless a moratorium is put into the next spending bill will continue with the big sell off and unnecessary “network optimization”,
Pass a bill, sending a letter doesn’t mean a goddamn thing.
Cannot pass anything but a bottle of bourbon in DC these days.
A letter urging the USPS not to consolidate is not the same thing as ordering it, no? Does this mean that the U.S. Senate has no legal teeth, or are they just making noise to appease angry voters? The voters and postal customers have every right to be mad at the looming problems that will make getting medicine and medical supplies delivered on time, and companies will not hesitate to use competitors if the USPS can’t get the job done, which they’ve proven over and over that they can’t.
As usual, the “study” was half assed and nothing but a smoke screen to give the appearance of concern. The management will only do the right thing when forced to, and Congress by now ought to have figured that out. I do think Congress can fire anybody on the Board of Governors, and should let those idiots know their asses could be history if they don’t heed the Senators’ demands.
Part of me sees more of the same, hot air and total indifference by management to run ragged and continue the destructive path it’s on and designed by the new PMG Brennan. The other part though senses tempers and patience wearing thin in Congress, and if that anger is acted upon, we could see reform that will stop the rampant idiocy. That’s a long shot but this constant bumbling by management has got to be getting on some influential persons’ nerves.
I believe a bill will be passed and congress will finally do something good!!!