{"id":37377,"date":"2025-02-12T11:00:54","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T16:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=37377"},"modified":"2025-02-12T11:00:54","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T16:00:54","slug":"senator-hawley-presses-postmaster-general-to-withdraw-detrimental-rural-delivery-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2025\/02\/12\/senator-hawley-presses-postmaster-general-to-withdraw-detrimental-rural-delivery-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Senator Hawley Presses Postmaster General to Withdraw Detrimental Rural Delivery Proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tuesday, February 11, 2025<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)\u00a0sent a letter<\/a>\u00a0to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy regarding a recent advisory opinion issued by the Postal Regulatory Commission that the Postal Service\u2019s proposed Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) would further delay mail delivery for Americans in rural areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI urge you to halt implementation of this plan for the sake of rural Americans who depend on the mail and in accordance with the Post Office\u2019s mission to serve all Americans,\u201d\u00a0wrote Senator Hawley<\/strong>. \u201c. . . [T]hese proposed changes will leave America\u2019s rural communities\u2014including many in my home state of Missouri\u2014with further degraded mail service at a time when rural families already face significant challenges with their mail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senator Hawley has fought for rural Americans\u2019 mail delivery as the challenges have continued without relief. In a recent Senate hearing, Senator Hawley\u00a0pressed<\/a>\u00a0the Postmaster General on this proposal before its release to urge his reconsideration.\u00a0Senator Hawley also\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0Rural Post Office Reconstruction Act\u00a0to<\/em>\u00a0establish a clear timeframe for reopening rural post offices that experience closure due to natural disaster damage or other unforeseen circumstances.<\/p>\n

Read the full letter\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0or below.<\/p>\n

February 11, 2025<\/p>\n

Mr. Louis DeJoy<\/p>\n

Postmaster General
\nUnited States Postal Service
\n475 L\u2019Enfant Plaza SW
\nWashington, DC 20260<\/p>\n

Dear Postmaster General DeJoy,<\/p>\n

On January 31, 2025, the Postal Regulatory Commission issued an advisory opinion concluding that the Postal Service\u2019s proposed Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) plan will degrade mail service in rural communities. To quote the report, the RTO plan will have \u201csignificant negative impacts on rural communities throughout the United States.\u201d I urge you to halt implementation of this plan for the sake of rural Americans who depend on the mail and in accordance with the Post Office\u2019s mission to serve all Americans.<\/p>\n

In its nearly 300-page opinion, the Regulatory Commission makes abundantly clear that the RTO\u2019s proposed changes are built on forecasts of cost savings and efficiency gains that simply cannot be credited. Worse, these proposed changes will leave America\u2019s rural communities\u2014including many in my home state of Missouri\u2014with further degraded mail service at a time when rural families already face significant challenges with their mail. Accordingly, the Regulatory Commission urged you to \u201creconsider whether the speculative, meager gains from this proposal outweigh the certain downgrade in service for a significant portion of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you testified before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in December, I asked you directly whether you would stop implementation of the RTO plan if the Regulatory Commission advised against the plan. You suggested that you would move forward regardless. Now that the facts are in, I am counting on you to reconsider. To be clear: Rural Missourians and every other American from a rural area deserve a postal system that delivers dependable, high-quality service.<\/p>\n

Please answer the following questions:<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Will you adopt any of the recommendations in the Regulatory Commission\u2019s opinion? If so, which ones?
    \n<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. How specifically will you fix the Postal Service\u2019s RTO plan to ensure that it does not have \u201csignificant negative impacts on rural communities throughout the United States?\u201d
    \n<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. How do you plan to reassure Americans living in rural communities that the Postal Service will not proceed with ill-conceived changes that would harm rural mail delivery?<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Sincerely,\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

    Josh Hawley
    \nUnited States Senator<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Tuesday, February 11, 2025 Today U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)\u00a0sent a letter\u00a0to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy regarding a recent advisory opinion issued by the Postal Regulatory Commission that the Postal Service\u2019s proposed Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) would further delay mail delivery for Americans in rural areas. \u201cI urge you to halt implementation of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37379,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37377\/revisions\/37379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}