Management

USPS Is Fighting to Block the Release of Data on Mail Delays

The Postal Service is fending off pressures before its regulator and federal courts, but it's already suffered one setback.

AUGUST 31, 2020
POSTAL SERVICE

ERIC KATZ
Senior Correspondent

Facing mounting legal challenges against reforms undertaken by its new leader, the U.S. Postal Service is seeking to prevent weekly public disclosure of mail delay data.

USPS is facing an effort to force it to make public its performance data, with the aim of demonstrating the depths of the current mail delays that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has admitted have accelerated in recent weeks. Postal management has pushed back, filing an objection to its regulator saying such disclosures are unnecessary and would buck the standard timing for their release. The effort to obtain data comes as the Postal Service is fending off at least a dozen lawsuits around the country looking to block changes DeJoy has put into place, including one states-led effort that has been fast tracked in federal court.

Steve Hutkins, a long-time gadfly for postal management, filed his request for weekly reports on USPS on-time performance to the Postal Regulatory Commission earlier this month. Hutkins noted that DeJoy’s emphasis on operating each step of postal delivery on a set schedule—even if that leads to mail getting left behind—has caused delays, which the postmaster general repeatedly acknowledged in recent congressional hearings. He also suggested in his filing that DeJoy’s reforms and the subsequent mail delays could amount to a de facto change in service standards, which would normally require an advisory opinion from PRC, heightening the need for disclosures. Additionally, he said, the upcoming election puts delivery data in the public interest.

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