WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service calls its new cost-saving plan Local Transportation Optimization (LTO). It involves ending the evening pickup of mail from post offices for delivery to a processing center.
So, mail dropped off at the post office during the day, or collected by letter carriers on their routes, sits in the post office until the following morning. Residents of Green Bay, one of two cities to get LTO first, are mixed on the results.
“Because I send a lot of mail out, I rely on that stuff to go out daily,” said Jeff Wilkey. “I look at the times on the mailbox and you think, ‘OK, 9 o’clock in the morning. They’re going to be picking it up.’ Well, now it’s a day later.”
“Every once in a while, they’ll miss a day or something, but it’s never been catastrophic,” said Lucas Brimmer. “Nothing’s ever really gotten missed because of it or anything.”
At a recent Congressional hearing, Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, criticized the program as one that focuses on cost savings instead of delivering the mail.
“You did two pilot runs on the LTO you did in Richmond, Virginia and Green Bay, Wisconsin, in my state,” Pocan said in September. “Since those policies were implemented, Wisconsin’s on time, two-day delivery service dropped from 91 and a half percent to 70 and a half percent.”
The Postal Service inspector general tells Spectrum News it plans to release a study on the Green Bay program next spring. It completed one review of the LTO program, looking at how it affected mail delivery in Richmond, Virginia.
From last Oct. 28 to March 1, the amount of first-class mail delivered on time in Richmond dropped 21%. Compared to a year earlier, the report redacted the effect on other mail classes, although it’s clear that every mail class listed had worse performance under LTO. Per the report, the postal service said it still does not have figures on the cost savings.
In its response to the report, the USPS said service performance in Richmond declined for a variety of factors, and whether LTO had any impact that cannot be determined.
With the election looming, the Postal Service said it is working to speed the delivery of mail-in ballots from LTO sites, so they’re postmarked on the day they are entered into the mail stream. A spokesperson told Spectrum News this is designed to “offset any potential impacts to ballots.”
In Green Bay, the city clerk is encouraging anyone voting by mail to send their completed ballots two weeks before Election Day to be safe.
In his testimony before congress last month, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said his agency will not create new LTO sites before Election Day. It’s also been expanded to Milwaukee and Madison, and DeJoy is eventually hoping for nationwide implementation.