NRECA is asking the U.S. Postal Service to reconsider its proposal to curb evening mail service in rural areas, saying the plan would have a “significant and deleterious impact on America’s electric cooperatives.”
Under the plan, the USPS “is walking away from its universal service obligation to rural America,” NRECA Regulatory Affairs Director Stephanie Crawford said in a Sept. 12 letter to the Postal Service. “This is simply unacceptable.”
The Aug. 22 proposal is part of a broader USPS effort to cut billions of dollars in annual costs and make the mail carrier’s network more efficient. Among other things, the plan would eliminate evening mail pickup in rural and remote areas and could slow mail service for areas that are more than 50 miles from a large USPS regional processing facility, adding another day of delivery time to mostly first-class mail.
As not-for-profit, consumer-owned organizations, electric co-ops rely on mail to send bills, receive payments, and distribute their magazines to consumer-members, the letter notes. Cooperative mail provides crucial information to members, including notices of annual meetings and director elections and how to participate in energy-saving programs.
Such mail is particularly important for rural homes and businesses that may lack adequate broadband service, precluding electronic billing services and electronic delivery of periodicals, the NRECA letter said.
“This USPS proposal comes at a time when many cooperatives are already facing serious reliability problems with postal delivery, and they are concerned these service changes will take it from bad to worse,” Crawford said.
NRECA asked the Postal Service to find other solutions to its financial woes that “will not subject rural America to different, lesser mail delivery standards than Americans living in more densely populated areas.”
The association also pressed the Postal Service to provide more opportunities for public feedback before submitting its proposal to the Postal Regulatory Commission or issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking.
“We urge USPS to reconsider this ill-conceived proposal that would harm not only our members but also the 42 million Americans they serve, who will disproportionately bear the brunt of these mail delivery changes,” the Sept. 12 letter concluded.
Even ahead of the proposal, co-ops and their members were “experiencing more and more late and lost mail,” said Forrest Boone, director of regulatory affairs for the Florida Electric Cooperatives Association. Boone said one Florida co-op, Glades Electric Cooperative in Moore Haven, received 11 late payments in February 2024 that had been mailed in June 2023.
Further delays in service will be particularly bad for sending bills and receiving payments, potentially leading to unnecessary service shutoffs if those communications are lost, he said. Boone encouraged co-ops to keep documenting instances of poor service or lost mail to help with USPS advocacy efforts.
“We are committed to providing safe, reliable, affordable electric service,” he said. “That requires a safe, reliable, affordable postal service.”
Molly Christian is a staff writer for NRECA.