The Riverside Press-Enterprise
California AG Rob Bonta sues the U.S. Postal Service
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is suing the United States Postal Service.
You’d think after California passed a law requiring the USPS to practically run our elections, state officials would be a little nicer to the federal agency, but no, we’re suing them.
This time it’s about delivery vehicles. California is outraged over the Postal Service’s decision to buy what the lawsuit decries as, “fossil fuel-powered, internal combustion engine vehicles.”
According to California’s lawsuit, which is joined by 15 other states, the District of Columbia, the city of New York and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the USPS violated the National Environmental Policy Act. The law requires the Postal Service to take a “hard look” at the impacts of its “Next Generation Delivery Vehicle Acquisitions” program before announcing a final decision.
So now your tax dollars will be spent on a long legal wrangle over the definition of “hard look.”
The lawsuit complains that the Postal Service “chose a manufacturer with minimal experience in producing electric vehicles, signed a contract, and made a substantial down payment for new vehicles,” and only then published a “cursory environmental review to justify the decision to replace 90 percent of its delivery fleet with fossil fuel-powered, internal combustion engine vehicles, despite other available, environmentally preferable alternatives.” This, California contends, violates the laws and risks the future of the planet.
Perhaps what the Postal Service actually violated is what Gov. Gavin Newsom likes to call “the California Way.” That’s the process of passing a law to mandate the purchase of something that’s made by a California campaign donor. The Postal Service signed contracts with “a defense company,” Oshkosh Defense, LLC, “to procure vehicles six months before even releasing its draft environmental review, and a year prior to issuing the Final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision.”
You might think the job of the Postal Service is to deliver the mail reliably and quickly, but California’s lawsuit makes that seem secondary to its responsibility to spend your tax dollars promoting the newest technology. “The Postal Service has spurred nationwide adoption of the stagecoach, nationwide expansion of railroads, nationwide use of air transportation, and the development of electric vehicles,” Bonta’s complaint states.
The Postal Service operates one of the largest civilian vehicle fleets in the world, with approximately 212,000 vehicles delivering mail to more than 163 million locations in the United States. Most of these vehicles were manufactured before 1994 and are in need of replacement, so the Postal Service created the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle Acquisitions program to evaluate, test and eventually buy about 165,000 vehicles over the next decade.
The USPS announced in February 2021 that it had awarded a contract to Oshkosh Defense, LLC, for “non-recurring engineering and tooling costs.” The contract allows the Postal Service to buy between 50,000 and 165,000 “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles” over a 10-year period. According to the lawsuit, the Postal Service gave Oshkosh Defense up to $482 million and instructions to support two powertrain alternatives — a “modern and efficient” internal combusion engine, and a battery electric vehicle. In June, the company announced that it would open a plant in South Carolina to build the USPS vehicles.
Then in August, the Postal Service announced its draft environmental impact statement for the vehicle acquisition process, eventually deciding that its “Preferred Alternative” was to procure a custom-made vehicle fleet that was 90% internal combustion engines, 10% battery electric vehicles.
The Postal Service pointed out that it has “a Congressional mandate to maintain efficient nationwide delivery of the mail and to provide prompt, reliable and efficient service to patrons.” It noted that battery electric vehicles have a higher total cost of ownership, and limited range that makes them infeasible on longer rural routes.
California says the Postal Service isn’t up to date on the latest technology and hasn’t adequately studied the impacts of its new vehicles on “air quality, environmental justice and climate harms.”
Unless the case is settled, this lawsuit over whether the Postal Service met its legal obligation to take a “hard look” could continue until it reaches the Supreme Court, or until a first-class stamp costs more than a gallon of gas, whichever comes first.