Democrats urge Biden to sack USPS board of governors

Washington Postal Scene by Bill McAllister

In a move against Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, 53 Democrats in the House of Representatives have urged President Joe Biden to sack the United States Postal Service’s entire six-member board of governors that hired the controversial postal leader.

The Democrats charged that DeJoy, a major financial backer of former President Donald Trump, has allowed mail service to deteriorate and that the board has done little to control him.

“The entirely Trump-appointed Postal Service BOG [board of governors] has politicized the most beloved agency in the federal government and allowed its service standards to tank,” the Democrats said in a March 18 letter to Biden.

The letter accused the six governors of “gross negligence” in overseeing the postal agency and urged Biden to remove them.

The letter said “the Postal Service is in free fall,” adding that the board’s only statement about DeJoy was to say that it was “tickled pink” with him.

“In addition to our deep concern about service standards and the intent to influence the presidential election, we are also disturbed by the staggering conflicts of interest presented by the board of governors and PMG DeJoy,” the letter said.

It noted that former board chairman Robert Duncan is on the board of two political action committees. 

Duncan, a prominent Republican Party leader, played a key role in getting the board to hire DeJoy.

DeJoy, the letter said, held “at least through November” a large stock interest in XPO Logistics, a Postal Service contractor.

The postmaster general has said he has divested himself from the holding. But the letter said that “it remains unclear whether he had made arrangements to repurchase those shares in the future.”

The letter also said DeJoy “may have also violated campaign finance laws” when he was chief executive of New Breed Logistics, a North Carolina-based firm, by pressuring his workers to give to Republican campaigns and then reimbursing those donations through corporate bonuses. 

The letter also said William D. Zollars, a member of the board of governors, was president and chief executive of YRC Worldwide, a freight carrier company involved in a lawsuit with the Department of Defense for allegedly overcharging the department millions of dollars.

The Washington Post reported March 19 that the nine-page letter was largely the work of Reps. Gerald E. Connolly, D-Va., Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J.

Both Connolly, who is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Government Operations that oversees the USPS, and Pascrell have been highly critical of DeJoy.

DeJoy has consistently said he did nothing improper and that postal ethics officials approved his actions.

The Postal Service had no immediate comment to the lawmakers’ plea to replace the current board of governors.

It did, however, issue a news release March 18 stating it had made “strong improvements” in mail deliveries across the country.

The USPS said it delivered 83.69 percent of one-day to three-day delivery mail on time in the week of March 6-12.

Deliveries of advertising mail hit 90.84 percent of on-time rates, but periodicals were on time only 77.64 percent of the time.

Mail delivery performance plummeted after a peak holiday season and February storms.

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