WASHINGTON — Getting to the bottom of "egregious" problems at the United States Postal Service (USPS) regional hub in the Richmond area.
On Monday, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy met with Representatives Rob Wittman and Jennifer McClellan and Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine to discuss the shortfalls. Warner called the meeting "productive."
The issues stem from the Richmond Regional Processing and Distribution Center in Sandston, which became the first USPS regional hub in the nation.
The change was part of DeJoy's 2021 ten-year "Delivering for America" plan to transform and modernize the postal service into a financially sound and efficient agency.
But it didn't quite work out — with lawmakers calling the Virginia rollout "totally unacceptable" and "a disaster."
A recent Inspector General audit of the Richmond Regional Processing and Distribution Center — which handles all Hampton Roads mail — found a lack of attention to detail, including losing mail that falls off conveyor belts and poor coordination between processing machines and trucks moving mail.
According to the audit, Virginia now has the worst on-time mail delivery in the nation. Only 66 percent of first-class mail in Virginia gets delivered within two days, while the national average is 87 percent.
"We made plain we've been unhappy with the performance and particularly unhappy with the transparency and willingness to communicate. and that was why we wanted the meeting," said Kaine.
"I believe we're on the path to being fixed but to quote Ronald Reagan, 'trust but verify.' And we're going to continue to be verifying this," said Warner.
The senators said the plan is to meet with DeJoy again in 60 days.