Texas County’s representative in the United States House announced Friday that he is sponsoring legislation that would require the United States Postal Service to pay any late fees incurred on bills due to delayed delivery.
“The USPS must be held accountable for the financial toll its poor service is taking on rural Missourians,” said U.S. Rep. Jason Smith. “Due to no fault of their own, individuals have been charged late fees and even had their utilities turned off because their mail arrives late or not at all.
It’s just one of many examples of how the USPS has completely ignored the harm caused by its poor service. “I urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to support this legislation to hold the USPS accountable for the rural mail crisis,” said Smith, a Republican from Salem.
Mail delays, particularly in rural areas, have resulted in people paying late fees and, in some cases, having their utilities turned off because their bills were lost in the mail or did not arrive on time, he said. Furthermore, several municipal utilities have expressed dissatisfaction with the slow delivery of bills to customers.
The bottleneck appears to be at regional mail sorting centers rather than with local post office employees.
The bill would allow anyone who received a late fee because a bill did not arrive on time to file a claim for repayment through an online portal or in person at any post office. The legislation would also require a report on delayed mail, providing Congress with relevant and accurate information to determine whether the USPS is taking steps to improve delivery times.
The rural mail crisis is having a significant impact on the quality of life in communities across southeast and south-central Missouri:
•Seniors are struggling to make ends meet because Social Security checks aren’t arriving on time.
•Veterans aren’t receiving the benefits they earned for their service to the nation.
•Small businesses are taking a financial hit due to packages for, and payments from, customers getting lost in the mail.
•Rural newspapers are frustrated because print editions are getting delivered to customers weeks – and even months – past the publishing date.
Smith stated that ending the rural mail crisis is and will remain his top priority.
In September, Smith wrote to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, requesting that the USPS Office of Inspector General audit the Sorting and Distribution Center in Hazelwood to determine why mail delivery is significantly delayed and inconsistent in eastern Missouri communities, particularly rural areas.
In 2023, Smith demanded answers from DeJoy regarding unacceptably long mail delays in southeast and south-central Missouri caused by the USPS’s decision to close the Cape Girardeau Processing and Distribution Facility and relocate mail sorting operations to the St. Louis Processing and Distribution Center in February 2022.
Smith and a bipartisan group of his colleagues wrote a letter in 2021 requesting that DeJoy halt any further postal facility consolidations as part of its flawed Delivering for America plan.
