WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Representative Jason Smith (Mo.), along with U.S. Representatives Sam Graves (Mo.), Ann Wagner (Mo.), and Blaine Luetkemeyer (Mo.), sent a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to demand the United States Postal Service (USPS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit the Sorting and Distribution Center in Hazelwood, Mo., to determine why mail delivery is significantly delayed and inconsistent in communities across eastern Missouri, especially in rural areas. Click HERE to read the letter.
“The rural mail crisis is taking a major toll on the quality of life in communities across southeast and south-central Missouri,” said Smith. “Seniors are struggling to make ends meet because Social Security checks aren’t arriving on time. Veterans aren’t receiving the benefits they earned for their selfless service to our nation. Small businesses are fearing that they’ll have to close their doors for good because packages for, and payments from, customers are getting lost in the mail.
“Enough is enough. The USPS must be held accountable for its poor decisions and years of mismanagement that created and continues to fuel the rural mail crisis. That’s why I’m demanding the USPS Office of Inspector General to immediately launch an investigation into the unacceptable mail delays in rural Missouri and provide a detailed plan on what – if any – steps the agency is taking to improve service. I will continue fighting to hold USPS leadership accountable for the rural mail crisis.”
In addition to demanding an audit of the Hazelwood Sorting and Distribution Center, Smith and his colleagues called on USPS to provide a detailed plan on how it will address unreliable mail service in rural Missouri, a report on recent absentee ballot issues and a plan to address these failures before the November election, and an explanation as to how the agency’s rural delivery proposal will affect each Post Office in the region.
Ending the rural mail crisis has been, and will continue to be, a top priority for Smith.
Last year, Smith sent a letter to DeJoy demanding answers about unacceptably long mail delays in southeast and south-central Missouri caused by USPS’s decision to shut down the Cape Girardeau Processing and Distribution Facility and move mail sorting operations to the Saint Louis Processing and Distribution Center in February 2022.
In 2021, Smith and a bipartisan group of his colleagues sent a letter demanding DeJoy pause any additional postal facility consolidations as part of its flawed Delivering for America plan.