WE MAY FINALLY BE ABLE TO GET RID OF TRUMP’S POSTMASTER GENERAL

 

                                     …Current Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy

 

DeJoy says he plans to “press forward with his plans to raise prices and slow the U.S. mail.”

 

There may be a way to rid the American Postal Service of its Trump installed Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. 

Yes, we may finally get rid of the same head Postmaster that removed a massive number of our large, blue mail boxes, that had mail sorting machines removed and disassembled, and that cut back on overtime during Holiday mail and ballot deliveries of “Elections By Mail.”

All of these actions have been interpreted as being instructions from the president to the Postmaster General in order to help him in his efforts to cut back on mail-in ballots.  It was a failed effort to have the ballots not arrive in time to be counted in the 2020 election that the former president still lost.

Now that Joe Biden is the U.S. President, the White House has moved toward reasserting control of the U.S. Postal Service.  Even as this Republican postmaster general, defiantly told Congress he would press forward with plans to raise prices and slow the mail, he was also brushing off calls for him to resign.

President Biden has instead named two Democrats and a voting rights advocate to fill three of the four openings on the Postal Service’s governing board.  They include Ron Stroman, the Postal Service’s recently retired deputy postmaster general; Amber McReynolds, the chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute; and Anton Hajjar, the former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union.

If all three win Senate confirmation, the nine-member board would be made up of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans with McReynolds, whose organization is an assortment of left-leaning groups, as the lone independent.    They are expected to be confirmed as even the GOP wants the U.S. Post Office to get back to more reasonable delivery times.

(DeJoy’s efforts have been so bad on the deliver service that some holiday and election mail is just now being delivered in some of America’s rural areas.)

The new nine-board member slate would create a Democratic advantage and potentially would have the votes necessary to oust DeJoy, whose summer overhaul led to precipitous service declines that snarled up untold numbers of Americans’ bills, prescriptions and paychecks.  DeJoy, with the current board’s backing, slashed overtime and dramatically and reduced mail processing capabilities.  These moves deemed by an inspector general’s audit reflect a lack concern for how they affect postal service.

Though the mail slowdowns have opened DeJoy to intense public scrutiny and they raised the hackles of some postal experts and voting rights activists, DeJoy has made it clear he would continue to push through his agenda to rein in the agency’s $188.4 billion in liabilities.  He testified to a House panel this week that discussions for his new strategic plan included further delivery slowdowns.

Congressional Democrats had pushed President Biden to move quickly on the nominations.  Mailing industry insiders and Congressional staff briefed by the White House and Biden’s transition team say the governors represent the most direct line for the administration to expand government services.  This would include broadband and banking access, as well as fortify agency oversight.

“I’m pleased the Biden administration is making the postal board of governors a top priority," said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee which will oversee the nominees’ confirmation process. "We need to get qualified nominees in these seats who will work with Congress to ensure the Postal Service is focused on strong service performance…and we need to do it quickly.”

The move is a potential shot-in-the-arm for voting rights groups, which have pressed Congress to use the U.S. Postal Service to expand vote-by-mail access as a firewall against Republican state legislatures that have introduced bills to do the opposite.

The new bloc is likely to be embraced by the powerful postal unions, whose leaders have privately expressed worries that DeJoy would cut jobs or contract work to private firms to reduce expenses.

More than 70 House Democrats called on Biden to move quickly on the nominations in a letter last week. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and several House Democrats went even further, by urging Biden to actually fire the board’s six sitting members and start from scratch.

The board’s lack of diversity drew pointed remarks during this week’s hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee.  The White House, in a statement this month, said Biden would choose nominees who “reflect his commitment to the workers of the U.S. Postal Service, who deliver on the post office’s vital universal service obligation.”

The White House, the nominees Stroman and McReynolds did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Hajjar declined to comment.

“I applaud President Biden’s nominations of three new members to the Postal Service Board of Governors. It is crystal clear that the Postal Service’s performance and its financial condition have deteriorated significantly, and new and better leadership is urgently needed,” said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. “I also commend the President for his continuing commitment to appoint individuals who represent the diversity of America. The board nominations today reflect that commitment.”

The body’s six sitting members are all older men, and all but one is White. The Postal Service’s workforce is disproportionately Black and female, compared to the rest of the federal workforce, and the agency has been a historical driver of employment in Black communities.

“Do you see it as a problem that the board of governors of the United States Postal Service looks like a millionaire White boys’ club?” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) asked DeJoy, noting that “more than 35% of postal workers are people of color.”

DeJoy responded that “the Postal Service would love to have a diverse board that reflects its population,” and that the nomination process was controlled solely by the former White House and Senate.

“The quicker we get some new board members from the administration, the less we can talk about this and move on to the plan and the real, real problems that we need to fix here,” he added.

Industry officials lauded the nominations, but said they had much to learn about McReynolds, whose postal background is largely on voting rights, and Hajjar, who left the Postal Workers Union several years ago.

“We’re very encouraged that the administration moved this fast,” said Art Sackler, manager of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, an industry group whose members include Amazon, eBay and other commercial mailers. “We hope there will be a speedy confirmation process.” (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

DeJoy spent most of the hearing dodging questions about his forthcoming strategic plan for the Postal Service, which includes higher prices and slower delivery.  This is according to two people briefed on the details, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposal is not yet complete.

Under questioning from Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) about the agency’s plan to eliminate two-day delivery windows for local mail, DeJoy said the agency was “evaluating all service standards.” When pressed further, he said that his plan would include two-day mail but that “some percentage of where the reach is right now may change” and “you need to define local.”

“If we in fact get the relief that we need in terms of time, we will put more mail on the ground,” DeJoy told Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) moments later, citing problems with the Postal Service’s air transportation network as cause for delays over the holiday season.

That policy change, according to mailing and logistics experts, would gridlock the entire postal network.

“It sounds like your solution to the problems we’ve identified is to just surrender,” Raskin said.

As expected, several Republicans used the hearing to defend DeJoy and deride Democrats’ concerns from postal hearings over the summer. They had raised questions about the processing of absentee ballots ahead of an election that would largely be conducted by mail. It sparked tense exchanges between Democrats who voted to impeach former president Donald Trump, and Republicans who, citing falsehoods about mail-in voting, attempted to overturn the election that removed him from office.

“You were the worst guy on the planet last time you were here,” the loudmouth U.S  Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said. “I just want to know what’s changed.”

DeJoy responded, “Well, we had an election,” which was an appropriate comment.

Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) called Jordan’s assertions “gaslighting” and referenced Trump’s false claims about there being, “fraud in mail-in voting.”

Connolly asked Ron Bloom, the board chair, whether the governors were still “tickled pink” by the hiring of DeJoy.  This alluded to the description used by GOP board member, John Barger, in testimony before a Senate panel on Sept. 9, 2020.

“I’m generally not tickled pink by things,” Bloom said. “But as I said, the board of governors believes the Postmaster General in very difficult circumstances is doing a good job.”

How they can come to the idea that the Postmaster General is doing a “good job” is beyond me.  But with the new board members, perhaps we and they can get rid of Mr. DeJoy.

Copyright G. Ater 2021