Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) is asking the inspector general (an oversight official) who oversees the U.S. Postal Service to initiate an investigation into controversial plans for the mail agency’s operations originating with its also controversial Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. DeJoy was appointed during the Trump era, though not directly by Trump.
Tlaib focused on concerns about a shift under DeJoy’s plan from local control of postal operations towards larger, regional hubs. She characterized this shift as threatening significant strain on workers and potentially upending the effective administration of the agency’s workforce through means like performance/service metrics. (“How will this affect reports of service performance and other essential performance metrics?” Tlaib asked the oversight official to answer, discussing DeJoy’s decade-oriented plans.)
“The USPS has a constitutional responsibility to provide a service to the public. Postmaster General DeJoy’s 10-year plan appears to put the USPS on a fast-track towards privatization, job cuts, negatively impacted service operations, and a culture of general dysfunction at one of our country’s bedrock institutions. I request you initiate an investigation into Mr. DeJoy’s plan,” Tlaib said.
The oversight official who Tlaib was addressing is named Tammy Hull. She was appointed to that position during the Trump era by the same postal board that gave DeJoy his role. In her letter to Hull, Tlaib said she’d heard concerns from constituents of hers who are involved with the Postal Service and also wondered about potential setbacks for other services from the agency, like Wi-Fi.
Other concerns that have been raised around DeJoy’s handling of the Postal Service have centered on the rates of physical confrontation seen by postal workers. “On October 14th, I wrote to Mr. DeJoy and Ms. Whitcomb Hull asking the United States Postal Service (USPS) to reinstate the patrolling duties of Postal Police Officers (PPOs) in the face of increasingly widespread, costly, and dangerous armed postal robberies and mail theft,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) wrote late last year to the Board of Governors overseeing the Postal Service and DeJoy. “It is imperative that this matter be addressed as promptly as possible.”
