The U.S. Postal Service has a new proposal on the table to cut $3 billion in costs that would include slower delivery to rural areas, like much of Wyoming.
The plan would increase the standard of what’s considered “on-time” delivery to five days and could add an additional day to delivery times for rural areas farther than 50 miles from the nearest large processing facility.
The USPS claims that under the new guidelines, most mail will move quicker than before.
“While some end-to-end products may experience an additional day, the efficiency of the new network is expected to advance much of this volume,” a media statement about the plan says. “USPS will maintain its commitment to universal service, ensuring reliable delivery to all communities regardless of distance.”
USPS spokesman James Boxrud did not respond to Cowboy State Daily’s questions asking for more specifics about how the plan will affect rural delivery services. National media outlets quoting USPS, however, have reported delivery times will be slower for locations 50 miles or more from a large processing center.
Ricci Roberts, branch president of the Cheyenne mail handling unit, told Cowboy State Daily the new plans do not bode well for Wyoming, where a large part of the state consists of rural mail delivery.
“These plans are failing in real time,” she said. “And no dollars have been saved yet, but billions have been spent instead.”
The proposals also leave out a lot of important details, she added.
“They are neglecting to mention that their ‘windows’ are changing,” she said. “Instead of a parcel being scanned right at the window, as it should be, they want to have it scanned when it begins processing.
“The reason for that is to skirt around the official time and make it seem like it was within the standards, even though it was not.”
She also questioned language from USPS saying that election mail will be prioritized and won’t be affected.
“It’s not true because of ‘local transportation optimization,’” she said. “That’s fancy language for the post office discontinuing to collect from the blue boxes. The other reason why it can potentially delay the mail is if they continue to consolidate smaller facilities like ours, it will have two times the transportation time just to sit in overwhelmed larger facilities.”
Earlier Proposal Just On Hold, Not Rescinded
The new USPS proposal comes even as an earlier proposal, called Delivering For America, remains on the table.
That plan would remove all of the Cowboy State’s large processing facilities, placing them in regional centers entirely within other states.
That produced a huge outcry in Wyoming, with many residents telling the USPS that they depend on the service for things like medications.
U.S. Postal Service Postmaster Louis DeJoy had announced in May that the plan removing Cheyenne and Casper’s large processing facilities and placing them in Denver and Billings respectively was on hold until January 2025.
Both Denver and Billings are more than 50 miles away from the nearest Wyoming city. USPS did not answer Cowboy State Daily’s inquiry as to whether that would effectively make the entire state rural delivery.
There has been some lack of clarity as well to what exactly has been paused in DeJoy’s Delivering For American Plan.
In the same timeframe that DeJoy announced the pause, he also told Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan, that USPS would still move forward with network changes in dozens of locations around the country.
The Postal Regulatory Commission has asked for clarification on that point.
It has also repeatedly urged the Postal Service to obtain an advisory opinion on the Delivering for America consolidation plan. An advisory opinion is required by law whenever changes will affect service on a nationwide or substantially nationwide basis.
DeJoy told the PRC in May that an advisory opinion is not yet needed for Delivering For America, but that certain aspects were being tested to see if they might require one in the future.
PRC Chairman Michael Kubayanda testified to Congress earlier this year that national service performance in 2024 is at a historic low, and that locations such as Atlanta, where Delivering for America was first rolled out, continue to suffer severe service problems.
Lawmakers Upset
Wyoming’s congressional delegation has been united in its opposition of the Delivering For America plan. They sponsored a bill that sought to prohibit the USPS from removing all of a state’s large processing facilities.
The bill, Postal Operations Stay Timely and Local, did not make it through Congress.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis told Cowboy State Daily on Friday that this latest proposal is not acceptable.
“People in most rural communities throughout Wyoming rely on USPS for timely mail delivery for medications, their bills, and communicating with loved ones,” she wrote in an email to Cowboy State Daily. “It is unacceptable that rural delivery is yet again being targeted by Postmaster General DeJoy.”
Lummis said she will continue to work with her colleagues to ensure that rural communities continue to have access to timely mail services.
Cowboy State Daily has reached out to other members of Wyoming’s Congressional delegation, as well as Secretary of State Chuck Gray.
Gray has previously urged USPS to entirely withdraw the consolidation proposal, which he believes could impede the integrity of elections and delay delivery of absentee ballots.
He was not impressed with the latest proposal either.
“I have been clear that I strongly oppose these outrageously wrong proposals to damage mail delivery in Wyoming,” he told Cowboy State Daily in an email. “I also view these proposals as detrimental to the administration of future elections, once they go into effect.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
