Fischer, Ricketts celebrate pause in USPS plan to transfer Nebraska mail operations to Denver

Nebraska's congressional delegation, from left, U.S. Pete Ricketts, U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer and U.S. Rep. Mike Flood on Monday, June 19, 2023, in Lincoln, Neb. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)

LINCOLN — Nebraska’s U.S. senators are celebrating a pause in a plan to move Nebraska’s mail processing operations from North Platte to Denver.

U.S. Sens. Deb Fischer and Pete Ricketts, both Republicans, welcomed U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s confirmation that such moves across the country would be paused until at least Jan. 1, 2025. The decision came after Fischer and Ricketts joined a bipartisan letter with 24 other senators urging the U.S. Postal Service to reconsider.

They wrote that the agency’s planned changes could slow mail delivery and should be paused until the Postal Regulatory Commission studied the issues and USPS addressed potential impacts.

Fischer said the “modernization” plan failed to consider the impact on rural communities, such as in North Platte. She encouraged USPS to listen to rural communities and incorporate feedback.

“This pause should allow more time for the plan and its impact to be studied,” she said in a Tuesday statement.

DeJoy, in a May 9 letter to U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said that in the small subset of cases where operations would move, it would also come with investments to “vastly improve” employee amenities and automation equipment.

USPS proposed transferring the operations of the North Platte Mail Processing and Distribution Center to Denver, instead converting the Nebraska facility to a local processing center.

The agency estimated the move would be a $4 million to $6 million investment with $1.5 million to $1.9 million in annual savings.

“We do not see these planned actions as at all consequential to service; rather, they are important elements of achieving a network that can provide greater service reliability in a cost-effective manner,” DeJoy wrote, while acknowledging that Congress was not convinced.

Ricketts shared an example last week on X, formerly Twitter, where packaged mail shipped directly from North Platte to Kearney, a distance of 100 miles, would jump to 940 miles under the new USPS proposal. Packages would go to Denver, then Omaha, then Kearney.

The junior senator said USPS’s primary responsibility is for timely and reliable delivery to all communities nationwide, and he was glad DeJoy listened to the senators.

“Modernization plans should improve customer service, not reduce it,” Ricketts said in a statement. “The voice of rural Nebraskans must not be neglected in future plans.”

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