Rural America is getting tired of waiting for its mail from the U.S. Postal Service, and seven Western Colorado towns are hiring lawyers to seek a potential lawsuit.
"Christmas cards began arriving in February, but what's not funny at all is driver's licenses, disability payments, election ballots, prescriptions," Silverthorne Town Manager Ryan Hyland, who serves 4,500 residents, told The Wall Street Journal.
"This is like a wildfire, and I'm not seeing regional or national Postal Service officials treating it like the disaster it is."
Officials in the towns noticed a downgrade in U.S. Postal Service reliability a few years ago and have recently hired lawyers to weight their legal options under the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, the Journal reported.
The USPS declined to comment to the Journal, but it has reported difficulty hiring staff throughout the U.S. as the online shopping boom has overstretched staffing and Amazon and other online retailers have deals with USPS to deliver packages in many rural areas, according to the report.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has been under fire from the left since taking office, and Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., is calling out the "profound managerial failure."
"We are at our wits' end trying to get the Postal Service to do its job," Welch told the Journal. "Most of us are realizing it's not just Vermont, it's not just Colorado, it's all across rural America."
But DeJoy is digging in against criticism, particularly with regard to local delivery issues.
"The Postal Service can and will solve problems within our own power, but local economic conditions are not among them," DeJoy wrote in a statement, the Journal reported.
Last month, DeJoy said the changing economic landscape has presented challenges to the old USPS structure, adding it will take time to reform the public service.
"Unfortunately, there are some stakeholders around us stuck in the past, as far back as 2006, and I again ask that all stakeholders recognize the urgency we face in making the changes we are pursuing for the nation," DeJoy told the February Board of Governors meeting.
"We are dedicated to serving the American people as legislated by Congress. The revenue derived from the monopoly we have does not cover its cost-of-service performance.
"We must in an expeditious manner make the changes we are pursuing."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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