WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet alongside Representatives Brittany Pettersen and Joe Neguse recently sent a second request for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to improve mail delivery service in Colorado’s mountain communities. The lawmakers sent their initial letter to USPS in December 2023 following a USPS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) audit of mail service in Colorado’s mountain towns that revealed staffing problems, disorganized and inefficient mail processing, and delivery delays.
“[T]he USPS workforce in Colorado is under-staffed and often under-resourced. The report concluded that the lack of sufficient staffing at Colorado mail facilities is the biggest barrier to consistent and reliable mail service in Colorado. As a result, Colorado constituents have lost trust in the USPS to deliver timely prescription medications, financial documents, and mail-in ballots, among other deliveries,” wrote the lawmakers.
“[W]e urge you to address the personnel recruitment and retention challenges identified in the audit and enable pay increases to hire and retain postal workers,” continued the lawmakers. “Pay increases for postal workers in Colorado would immediately strengthen USPS recruitment and retention and lead to more consistent, on-time delivery and improved mail operations across our state.”
Hickenlooper, Bennet, Pettersen, and Neguse have repeatedly called on USPS to improve mail service for Coloradans. In May, Hickenlooper, Bennet, and Neguse urged USPS to eliminate delivery fees for Coloradans whose physical addresses were not eligible for home delivery. In April, Hickenlooper and Bennet successfully pushed USPS to delay proposed changes to USPS’ Grand Junction Processing and Distribution Center. Last year, Hickenlooper and Bennet invited DeJoy to tour a mail facility in Colorado to see the ongoing service and delivery challenges that Coloradans face.
Text of the letter is available HERE and below.
Dear Postmaster General DeJoy and Deputy Postmaster General Tulino:
We write to follow up on concerns we raised in our December 21, 2023 letter to you, following last year’s United States Postal Service (USPS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report on delivery and customer service issues in Colorado. Specifically, we urge you to address the personnel recruitment and retention challenges identified in the audit and enable pay increases to hire and retain postal workers. We believe this is necessary due to increased competition in the job market and the high cost of living, especially in Colorado mountain communities.
According to the USPS OIG report, the USPS workforce in Colorado is under-staffed and often under-resourced. The report concluded that the lack of sufficient staffing at Colorado mail facilities is the biggest barrier to consistent and reliable mail service in Colorado. As a result, Colorado constituents have lost trust in the USPS to deliver timely prescription medications, financial documents, and mail-in ballots, among other deliveries. The high cost of housing in our state further exacerbates recruitment and retention challenges with low pay for postal workers. The median price of a single-family home in the seven county Denver Metro Area is $600,000, and can be more than double that price in some mountain towns, where postal facilities are unable to hire and retain enough workers for basic mail processing and delivery that Coloradans expect.
The USPS OIG made ten recommendations to the USPS Colorado/Wyoming District Office (District), and the District agreed to implement seven of the recommendations with a target date to complete them by April 30, 2024. Notably, two of the three recommendations that the District disagreed with involve staffing and personnel challenges that undermine the entire mail operation in Colorado. The District referred these recommendations to the Office of the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) for further consideration.
As the USPS considers prescriptive measures to address our concerns, we ask that you resolve the issues as soon as possible. Pay increases for postal workers in Colorado would immediately strengthen USPS recruitment and retention and lead to more consistent, on-time delivery and improved mail operations across our state.
We remain committed to working with you to identify solutions to provide better service to our constituents. We urge USPS leadership to provide the same level of attention to the staffing and personnel issues as the other recommendations in the USPS OIG report that will enable Coloradans to regain trust in this vital institution.
We look forward to hearing from you and thank you for your attention to this important matter.
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