As residents complain of achingly slow and sporadic mail delivery across the state, Vermont’s congressional delegation is pointing their fingers at the U.S. Postal Service’s top man in charge to answer for the state’s postal woes.
And with at-home Covid-19 tests set to be mailed out to 500 million Americans in short order, time is of the essence for the USPS to get its act together.
U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., as well as Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt. requested intervention in a Thursday letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy amid what they deemed the USPS’s “continued failure to meet its own standards of service” in Vermont. In one of the state’s two mail processing facilities, postal workers have been left with no mail processing machines — forcing them to sort mail by hand.
One of the White River Junction postal facility’s two sorting machines was removed in anticipation of a new replacement’s arrival in July 2020. But the replacement machine never came, leaving the center with just one. And when that machine broke, postal workers were forced to sort mail by hand, dramatically slowing down sorting and delivery times, according to a news release from the delegation.
In October 2020, the delegation urgently asked DeJoy to send the replacement machine. A replacement finally arrived a year later in October 2021. But upon arrival, the delegation said it was stripped of its parts, rendering it useless.
In a rural state like Vermont, many residents count on the postal service to send vital documents, checks and prescription drugs to their houses. Many of those deliveries have been slowed down due to the issues at White River Junction.
Sanders, Leahy and Welch wrote that Vermont’s postal workers “are working remarkably hard under extraordinary circumstances and deserve to know that you, their Postmaster General, support their efforts and will provide them with the equipment they need to do their job.”
In a separate news release, Sanders went a step further, calling for President Joe Biden to demand DeJoy’s resignation. Sanders accused DeJoy of attempting “to undermine and sabotage” the postal service, concluding that it “is long past time for (him) to go.”
“By any objective measure, Louis DeJoy, a top campaign contributor of Donald Trump, has been, by far and away, the worst Postmaster General in the modern history of America,” Sanders said Thursday.
Time is of the essence, Sanders said, because the federal government is set to mail 500 million at-home Covid-19 tests to all Americans as the country battles the latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
“But, given the deterioration of the postal service under Mr. DeJoy, how can anyone have confidence that these life-saving tests will be delivered to the American people in a timely and efficient manner? I think the obvious answer to that question is they cannot,” Sanders said.