Opinion: USPS changes would leave rural Missourians, small businesses behind

Courtesy Madison Strategies LLC

Travis Korson

The challenges facing rural Americans seem to multiply with each passing year. From diminishing health care access to broadband connectivity gaps, the obstacles to maintaining their way of life continue to mount.

Now, a new threat looms on the horizon. Proposed changes to postal delivery service could further isolate these communities from vital services they depend upon. In Missouri, where one-third of residents live in rural areas – a rate that makes it one of the most rural states in the country – this is of particular concern.

Historically, the United States Postal Service has been the main provider of rural delivery service, as private-sector carriers have proven unable or unwilling to meet this need. But misguided efforts to change the way the Postal Service operates in the name of so-called reforms may systematically degrade the quality of rural mail service and create a “two-tier” system under which USPS endeavors to provide improved service to urban and suburban communities at the expense of worse service to rural America.

Known as the Regional Transportation Optimization plan, the changes that have been proposed as part of its implementation would dramatically reduce the frequency of mail pickup at rural post offices and consolidate services for locations more than 50 miles from regional hubs. In practical terms, this means eliminating evening mail pickup at over 80% of Missouri's post offices and creating new hurdles for rural residents to access basic postal services.

By design, these changes will not affect urban and suburban residents, despite those communities having access to multiple package delivery options. But for many rural communities, the USPS often serves as the only affordable and reliable delivery service available. This role has become even more vital in recent years as more commerce moves online and critical services – from filling prescription medication to issuing Social Security checks to rural small businesses selling their goods online – increasingly rely on reliable mail delivery.

The Missouri Farm Bureau, representing 157,000 member families across the state, already has sounded the alarm, recently writing directly to the postmaster general to express their deep concerns about the RTO plan's impact on rural communities. Their worry is well founded. This proposed service degradation would come on top of already reduced delivery standards that have been implemented in recent years and follows closely on the heels of USPS’s decision to increase prices on 17,000 rural ZIP codes. Higher prices and reduced service are a bad deal for rural Americans.

Fortunately, political leaders in Missouri like Sen. Josh Hawley have led the way on Capitol Hill in raising awareness about these concerns. During a mid-November confirmation hearing for nominees to the Postal Service Board of Governors, he pressed the candidates on their understanding of how the RTO plan would affect rural communities. Troublingly, none of the three nominees demonstrated awareness of the potential negative impacts the RTO could have on rural service – a stunning oversight that Sen. Hawley rightly identified as disqualifying unless properly addressed. At a subsequent hearing with the postmaster general on Dec. 5, meanwhile, the senator doubled down on his position stating: “I hate this plan, and I'm going to do everything I can to kill it. I'm going to try to protect every delivery to the state of Missouri, to my rural areas.”

Other recent decisions also raise serious questions about management priorities.

Over the past several years USPS leadership has trumpeted the fact that it has added nearly 200,000 full-time positions that were previously considered to be part time. Labor costs have skyrocketed as a result. Similarly, the Postal Service is in the process of consolidating local processing facilities into a series of mega sorting and delivery centers that have hurt on-time delivery rates and are saddling the Postal Service with significant construction and implementation costs. These actions are making things worse, not better, given USPS’s existing financial challenges.

At the end of the day, it is important to ensure that rural Missourians and frankly all Americans, no matter where they live, have affordable and reliable access to mail and package delivery services. Instead of downgrading rural service, USPS leadership should focus on enacting legitimate operational improvements that maintain the same six-day-a-week reliable mail service in rural areas that urban residents take for granted. The time has come to develop a better path forward that honors this fundamental service obligation.

Travis Korson is a political commentator who previously worked at the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity. He currently works at Madison Strategies LLC. Korson can be reached at travis@madisonstrategiesllc.com.