On August 1 of this year, the Save The Post Office Coalition sent a letter signed by 83 state and national organizations urging the Biden Administration to appoint postal board nominees who will protect and expand postal services and hold Louis DeJoy accountable.
On the heels of this letter, over 171,000 voters have sent letters to President Biden with the same ask.
The throughline for both is clear—the voting public believes that instead of corporate and private equity executives, the USPS Board of Governors needs leadership that has relevant lived experience and expertise that can better represent the USPS workforce and the nation.
The Biden Administration must be bold, and act now to choose nominees that have postal and/or labor experience, have the time to commit to serving in the best interests of the postal workforce and the nation, and represent the demographics of the postal service workers and the nation.
The administration may be tempted to pair their nominees, choosing one Democrat and one Republican, to satisfy the Republican members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who have a history of obstructionism, refusing to confirm even the most moderate Democrats to federal posts. But they don’t have to go this route. We urge Senate and Homeland Security Committee leadership to consider a recent precedent of a Democratic federal nominee failing to receive Republican support within a congressional committee, and still moving forward through the nomination process successfully.
Earlier this year, Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Mary Boyle’s nomination stalled in a tie between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Leadership called a floor vote to discharge her nomination to the full Senate, where Mary Boyle was then voted into her position on a party line 50-48 vote.
The rare freedom the bylaws of the board grant the administration to choose nominees from any party this time should not be ignored. And given the urgency of saving the Post Office, these nominees make a good case for a potential tie-breaking vote from the Vice President in the full Senate. A Trump appointee still wreaking havoc on a beloved national institution is cause to repeat this strategy, and put in place a Postal Board of Governors ready to hold DeJoy fully accountable.
The last two major nominees to the postal board during the President’s term must be steadfast in their leadership to take the Postal Service Reform Act as a mandate to protect and expand postal services and bring USPS into the future. As President Biden said in the bill-signing ceremony this spring, now is the time to “Imagine a trip to the Post Office where you can pick up your bus pass or your hunting license or your fishing license.” At this critical time, USPS must have bold, visionary stewardship at the helm, not Trump appointees Ronald Moak, William Zollars, and above all Louis DeJoy executing a plan to privatize the people’s most cherished public institution.
The Save the Post Office Coalition came together in the summer of 2020 after Postmaster Louis DeJoy was appointed and began cutting service and slowing down the mail. The coalition’s membership includes over 300 organizations that range from national groups like Public Citizen, ACLU, NAACP, LCCHR, Indivisible, MoveOn, Color of Change, National Farmers Union, VoteVets, and RuralOrganizing.org, to state groups like Mainers for Accountable Leadership, Alaska PIRG, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. Our asks of Congress and the Biden administration are here.
Leave a Reply