Lawmakers Lambast Postmaster General for Mail Delivery Delays

BALTIMORE — A congressional hearing Monday showed the days are likely to be numbered for Louis DeJoy as the 75th U.S. postmaster general.

The Trump administration appointee took over as head of the U.S. Postal Service in May 2020 with a plan of making the nation’s mail service more efficient.

At a House Oversight and Reform subcommittee hearing on persistent mail delays in Baltimore, he fell under heavy criticism from lawmakers, particularly the Democrats.

“Postmaster DeJoy must be removed,” said Rep. David Trone, D-Md.

“Postmaster DeJoy must step down. He’s got to go,” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md.

Lawmakers used problems with staffing, equipment breakdowns and on-time mail deliveries in Baltimore as an example of why the Postal Service needs top-to-bottom changes.

DeJoy, 64, ascended to postmaster general based largely on his success as chief executive officer of North Carolina-based logistics and freight company New Breed Logistics, which he founded in 1983. He sold it in 2014 for $615 million.

The company operated with nearly 7,000 employees and held several Postal Service contracts. 

Upon taking over at the Postal Service in 2020, DeJoy instituted a 10-year efficiency plan. It was supposed to cut costs to reduce the Postal Service’s growing budget deficit and to put it in a better position to compete with private delivery services, like FedEx and United Parcel Service.

The plan included eliminating overtime, banning extra trips by carriers to deliver mail, decommissioning hundreds of high-speed mail-sorting machines and removing the least-used mail collection boxes from streets.

Within months, customers began complaining about delays in mail delivery. The complaints led to congressional investigations and a Postal Service inspector general’s audit.

The criticisms continued Monday before the subcommittee on government operations. The lawmakers chose Baltimore as the example because of a Postal Service inspector general’s report last year that said Baltimore residents experience some of the nation’s worst mail delivery problems.

Single-piece first-class mail designated for three-to-five-day delivery in the Baltimore area arrived on schedule only 63.2% of the time in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021, the inspector general’s report said. Nationwide, the average has been around 93%.

Eric Gilbert, acting Baltimore postmaster since October, tried to defend the Postal Service as an organization trying to do its best while struggling under difficulties from the COVID-19 pandemic and a low budget.

“We make every effort to see that when we receive the mail, we deliver the mail,” Gilbert said.

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., responded, “That’s not happening.”

Gilbert said Baltimore’s greatest problem was a staffing shortage. The local Postal Service reports a shortfall of 102 mail carriers and 113 processing clerks.

The pandemic deepened the problems by making some postal employees leave their jobs because of illness, fear of illness or the need to care for children unable to attend school.

Now, some longtime employees must continue their normal workload while also training new employees, Gilbert and other postal employees say.

“We need consistent employee availability,” Gilbert said.

DeJoy has largely ignored criticisms of his operating style.

Last year, in response to a question from the Postal Service’s Board of Governors about how long he planned to stay in his job, he replied, “A long time, get used to me.”

Last month, DeJoy defied Biden administration instructions to convert the Postal Service fleet to electric vehicles. He announced he placed an $11.3 billion order to renew the fleet with mostly gasoline-powered vehicles.

The Environmental Protection Agency criticized DeJoy’s decision, saying the combustion engine vehicles have low fuel efficiency and would cause $900 million in environmental damage over 20 years.

Tom can be reached at [email protected]