WASHINGTON D.C., DC — U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was castigated by Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff on Tuesday in a hearing on oversight of the United States Postal Service amid ongoing mail delays in metro Atlanta and elsewhere.
In a tense exchange between Sen. Ossoff and Postmaster General DeJoy, the Democrat said just 36% of mail in the north Georgia region is being delivered on time. Ossoff asked DeJoy when service reliability would normalize, and the postmaster general said "I think we'll get where we need to be in about 60 days."
"You don't have months to fix 36% of mail being delivered on time," Ossoff countered. "I've got constituents with prescriptions that aren't being delivered. I've got constituents who can't pay their rent and their mortgage. I've got businesses who aren't able to ship products or receive supplies."
In his concluding remarks, Ossoff again put DeJoy on the hot seat.
"You've got weeks, not months, to fix this," he said. "And if you don't fix it, 36% on time delivery, I don't think you're fit for this job."
DeJoy responded to Ossoff's questions about what USPS is doing to fix the issues in metro Atlanta by saying the agency had "engaged over 50 different management executives on site," was "looking at truck schedules, revamping our truck schedules" and was "stabilizing the operation in terms of our machinery that we have deployed there" among other efforts to restore normal service.
The two also had a fiery exchange over a letter Ossoff sent to DeJoy about the delays that the postmaster general admitted he had not read.
"Let me just give you a friendly piece of advice -- you personally should read letters from members of the U.S. Senate committee that funds and oversees your operations, particularly where you are failing abysmally to fulfil your core mission in my state," the Democrat said.
The 10 a.m. hearing in Washington, D.C. featured testimony from Postmaster General DeJoy and other leaders of the postal system including Roman Martinez IV, the chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, Michael Kubayanda, the chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, and USPS Inspector General Tammy Hull.
You can re-watch the stream of that hearing below. You can also watch the specific exchange between Ossoff and DeJoy in the video player above this story.
More on the mail delays
The hearing comes as complaints of mail delays in major metropolitan areas, including Atlanta, Houston and Richmond, continue. Those cities have been at the forefront of the Postmaster General's evolving rollout of the "Delivering for America" plan, a 10-year, billion-dollar effort to streamline postal operations and save money.
Sen. Jon Ossoff, among the lawmakers who've demanded answers about the mail delays plaguing metro Atlanta, serves on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee. Ossoff and other members of the Georgia congressional delegation have been speaking out on delays for weeks -- the problems believed to be attributed to the launch of metro Atlanta's new Regional Process & Distribution Center, which officially opened on Feb. 24 in Palmetto.
"These RP&DC's are supposed to be these regional processing centers that were going to take in mail from a wide regional area to bring it in under one umbrella," Ivan Butts, President of the National Association of Postal Supervisors, told 11Alive. "Process [mail] in that network environment and then truck it to other regional processing centers where it would be sorted out downstream to local processing centers and then ultimately to sorting distribution centers."
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But since the Palmetto facility opened, disruptions have spiked.
11Alive has received more than 2,000 viewer messages asking for answers and help with tracking packages and mail ranging from absentee ballots and tax documents to critical prescription medication and travel documents.
While a spokesperson for USPS maintains that operations are improving, the postal service has yet to provide clarification on the root causes of the delays or any answers to 11Alive's questions about operations at the facility or when customers can expect operations to return to normal.
Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, from Sen. Ossoff, a Democrat, to Republican Reps. Mike Collins and Andrew Clyde have told 11Alive they, too, are awaiting a response to inquires.
A member of the Postal Regulatory Commission, which has an advisory oversight capacity for USPS, told 11Alive even members of that commission have not always gotten answers on the issues.
"I've never, ever seen service this poor in my entire career," the commission's vice chairman, Thomas Day, told 11Alive last week. "Never."
According to the USPS' public dashboard, which measures service performance by zip code, on-time delivery of First-class mail in Georgia dropped in mid-February as the Palmetto facility launched. While Georgia's numbers had previously hovered around 80 percent of on-time delivery at the beginning of 2024, the week of Feb. 24 shows on-time rates taking a dive.
Day said he also examined data showing the time it takes for a simple letter or postcard to go from one location in the Atlanta area district to another had been as high as six days -- when it can often be overnight and should be no later than two days. Day called it "shocking."
"The problem you have when you get this backlogged, when you have an average time to deliver a letter just within the Atlanta area of six days -- totally ridiculous -- what that tells me is they're backing up mail all over the place," he said.
He added: "They've lost control of the process."