The Ukiah, Calif., post office used to be open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day of the week, but the revenue has gone down as population has decreased. It's now open 8 a.m. to noon on weekdays.
Sage Van Wing / OPB
One of the many parts of a 10-year-plan to make the U.S. Postal Service financially sustainable involves reductions to rural postal service. U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was appointed by then-President Trump in 2020. The cutbacks to rural service are part of DeJoy’s “Delivering for America” plan. We talk with Baker City Herald Editor Jayson Jacoby about the latest cutbacks, which went into effect in February.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Because of a change made by the U.S. Postal Service in late February, it could take longer for a piece of mail sent by a rural Oregonian to arrive at its destination. According to one report, the change has been implemented at 170 post offices across the state of Oregon, from the coast all the way to the Wallowas. Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald. He wrote about this recently and he joins us now. Welcome back to the show.
Jayson Jacoby: Thanks, Dave.
Miller: Can you explain what this change actually entails?
Jacoby: Sure. The policy’s official name is Local Transportation Optimization (LTO). And it’s part of the Postmaster General DeJoy’s 10 year Delivering for America Plan, which is intended to make the agency financially solvent. The standard schedule prior to LTO for smaller rural post offices was to have two mail trucks per day. One arrived in the morning to drop off mail that was to be delivered that day. The second truck stopped in the evening to pick up outgoing mail, [for] the customers that either brought it to the post office or dropped it in a collection box or left it in their mailbox. Now there’s one truck per day and that’s the morning truck that drops off mail to be delivered. And that truck also picks up outgoing mail that was collected the previous day.
There may be some exceptions to this. One postal worker I talked to, on anonymity, from a small rural post office here in northeast Oregon, said that that office already had gone down to one truck per day, not associated with the LTO policy. And under the new policy, that truck is arriving several hours earlier. So customers have less time each day to drop off outgoing mail and ensure that it would be picked up that day.
Miller: So what might this mean in practice for somebody, say, who drops off a letter at a post office in Joseph or John Day or Fossil or - I looked on a map - maybe dozens of post offices on the coast?
Jacoby: Unless the person had brought the mail to the office before the truck arrived in the morning, the one daily truck, that outgoing mail would be left overnight in the post office and then it would be picked up the next morning by the one daily truck. So it’s likely that those pieces of mail would be delivered one day later than they were prior to LTO.
Miller: What is the big idea behind this change? What is being optimized?
Jacoby: Well, according to the Postal Service spokesperson that I talked with, this new policy, and this is a quote, “Would reduce the overall number of carbon wasting duplicate trips.” And I didn’t get an answer to my question about why the trips would be described as duplicate, since we’re talking about reducing one daily trip and an internal postal service document that I looked at also referred to eliminating excessive mileage.
Miller: How much money is the USPS saying that they’ll save because of this change?
Jacoby: So the Postmaster General wrote in a letter to President Biden and congressional leaders in January that the LTO policy was projected to save the agency $1 billion per year.
Miller: What could this mean for mail-in ballots? This is a big issue for Oregonians, given that we are all either mail in or drop off ballots.
Jacoby: Well, conceivably, it could mean a ballot that previously would have arrived at the county clerk’s office before election day would now be late and therefore wouldn’t be counted. I note though, and I did in the story as well, that the county clerks across the state have always recommended that voters, if they haven’t mailed their ballot a week or so before the election, to not put it in the mail and instead take it to a drop site or to the clerk’s office. So I don’t know that the practical effect of LTO on mail-in ballots is likely to be significant, at least for people who heed that advice.
Miller: One of the things that most stood out to me in your reporting was just how little information the Postal Service itself provided to you. I mean, one example is that they didn’t tell you which post offices are actually being affected by this change. I mean, what did they say?
Jacoby: Well, this is another direct quote from the same postal service spokesperson, that list of affected post offices is quote, “Not publicly available.” And I didn’t get any further explanation beyond that.
Miller: So instead of getting that information from the USPS, you relied partly on the work of a retired English professor in upstate New York. What was he able to piece together?
Jacoby: Now, Steve Hutkins is his name and his website is savethepostoffice.com. He posts there about a variety of Postal Service policy changes. In talking to him and based on the biography on his website, he’s never worked for the Postal Service and doesn’t have any direct connection to the agency. He said he started his website in 2011 when his local post office was on a list of post offices that could be closed. And he’s been involved ever since. He’s filed many comments to the Postal Regulatory Commission and has frequent posts about a variety of topics, including LTO, which actually rolled out in several other states, I think starting in January of this year, before coming to Oregon.
Miller: Do you have any sense for why the USPS is maintaining this level of secrecy, is saying that the specific post offices that have been affected by this change, a not insignificant change for people who live near them, why that’s not publicly available?
Jacoby: I don’t understand it. The policy itself is pretty straightforward and the agency hasn’t challenged any description that I and others have made of the policy and the effect that it has. And given that, I can’t understand refusing to provide a list of the affected offices at the very least.
Miller: What have they acknowledged? I mean, even just in internal communications, about the effect that these changes might have?
Jacoby: Yeah. So the Postal Service spokesperson that I talked with wrote to me that the agency and this is another quote, “Does not expect these efforts to impact customer service.” But I also read a document from November 2023 and this is one that Steve Hutkins obtained and it was written by attorneys for the postal service in response to questions from the Postal Regulatory Commission about the LTO policy. And one of those responses from the attorneys reads in part, and this is a quote, “While short term impacts to service performance during the execution process may occur, the Postal Service will monitor any impacts that occur and may make adjustments as necessary and warranted.” So that’s a lot of words that don’t really say a whole lot.
Miller: What did you hear from postal workers or postal worker unions about this change?
Jacoby: So the current postal workers, and I spoke with several at offices around Northeast Oregon and without exception, they declined to speak on the record. Most referred me to the spokesperson who I mentioned earlier, [and] the one I did speak with spoke on condition of anonymity and gave me few details. But I have talked with representatives from the American Postal Workers Union, both from Oregon and the Western regional director, as well as a retired letter carrier from Portland, and they’re all critics of the new policy and of the lack of transparency from the Postal Service.
Miller: What about members of Oregon’s congressional delegation? What have they said about this?
Jacoby: Well, both senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, signed a letter, on March 13th, to the Postmaster General that in effect urged him to stop any policies, including LTO that could eliminate Postal Service jobs or slow mail delivery. Merkley has been a critic of the Delivering for America Plan, which LTO is a part of, for the past few years. He’s described it as “delivering badly for Americans’ plans.” Senator Merkley’s press secretary told me that senators, looking at multiple options related to this, including a possible moratorium, would be attached to a federal appropriations bill that could retroactively restrict the Postal Service from imposing policies such as LTO that slow mail delivery.
Miller: Jayson Jacoby, thanks very much.
Jacoby: You’re welcome.
Miller: Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald.
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