Lankford Questions Postmaster General on Proposed Changes to Tulsa USPS Processing Facility

WA S H I N G TO N , DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) participated in a Senate Homeland Security hearing entitled, “Oversight of the United States Postal Service (USPS),” with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testifying. Lankford used the opportunity to address several questions regarding concerns for proposed changes by USPS, including the proposed timeline, how it will impact employees, and how mail will be processed moving forward. Many Oklahomans have expressed concern about delay - cally seniors and veterans who rely on receiving benthe mail, but also the employees at the Tulsa USPS facility.

Following a public meeting held by USPS at receive community input, Lankford, along with Senator Markwayne Mullin (ROK), and Representatives Frank Lucas (R-OK), Tom Cole (R-OK), and Stephanie Bice (R-OK) sent a letter to DeJoy regarding their concerns on the changes in the Delivering for America TenYear Plan will impact Oklahoma.

Excerpt Lankford: I do have a couple things just to be able to bring up though because as we walk through - talked about Atlanta and the decline in the service turnthe increased cost on it. For the service turnaround time-period, Mr. DeJoy, I over again, give us a little bit more time the service will get better on it. What do you anticipate? Just take Atlanta got Tulsa and Oklahoma walk through this process. Is it an expectation that every one of these locations will see a decline and then it will increase as far as the delivery time-period?

DeJoy: … I expect these operations to be stabilized coming into the summer. You know into the summertime there are other doing that impact this, transportation initiatives to stop running empty trucks— 50,000 empty trucks— around the country and so forth. So, there were a lot of things coming together that will prove out this model what I think combined with coming up on the election, I expect that we will slow down, and a lot of the moves continue with the construction site. These MPAs that Tulsa which are all will get investments into them— to more appropriately serve the community in package industry and package business and so forth will most likely to put our project plan to roll out these transitions around 40 locations, and most likely will not happen until the end going to have to commute - ing to have to commute to putting money into these fadeferred maintenance.

Lankford: So, give saying because of the elecpause …?

DeJoy: These are 40 the past. This is separate than the roll out of the network of in Atlanta and so forth. This is just picking up outgoing mail moving it to a place where we can consolidate all the outgoing mail that goes around the country and refurbishing the facilities and make them more - doing. So, these are smaller move people. Atlanta was moving at you know like I said 1,500 people out of 10 plants.

Lankford: So, timepausing these changes based on…

DeJoy: …we will put a project plan together for all these sites and most likely the any of the mail move work will start after