U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, said this week he’s not letting up on applying pressure to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to improve the postal service’s efficiency.
Subscribers to The Times have routinely reported delays in receiving their newspapers — sometimes for as long as five weeks. The Times received about a dozen complaints about late newspapers last week.
Ossoff spoke about issues with the United States Postal Service during a luncheon recently. Ossoff’s office has been in contact with The Times since the newspaper filed a formal complaint on the lack of service from the post office several months ago.
U.S. Congressman Buddy Carter (R-Pooler) is expected to visit The Blackshear Times this week to receive first hand reports about the delay in newspaper deliveries.
Carter’s office has also been in regular contact with The Times on the issue.
Ossoff said he hears more complaints about postal service efficiency than any other issue he has worked on since his election to the Senate.
“There is no single issue where more people have come up to me on the street or at the airport than postal issues,” Ossoff said. “Every single day, folks are just coming up and saying, ‘Keep at it, stay on it.”
Ossoff said issues with the postal service fall directly on management, not postal workers.
However, it is not up to Congress to determine whether DeJoy keeps his job. According to Ossoff, only the USPS Board of Governors can fire DeJoy, but “they don’t seem at this moment inclined to do that.”
Ossoff said he has seen some improvement in the data reported to him, but he wants to see more. He said he is looking for sustained improvements in on-time delivery data and confidence that the data he receives is “properly generated.”
Jack Lindner of the Marietta Daily Journal contributed to this report.
