USPS audit completed of North Dakota postal operations; Hoeven explains findings

BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) - Last week, the U.S. Post Office Inspector General completed the full audit of North Dakota postal operations. The Postal Inspector General has made recommendations from this audit to ensure timely mail service. If you recall, our congressional delegation called on Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to pause mail processing changes at certain locations in North Dakota, Bismarck included, and he agreed to it.

Senator John Hoeven said the audit shows where and how the USPS needs to make improvements. He said it starts with hiring more staff and providing them with sufficient training. Hoeven said that’s the first thing that needs to happen. He said the audit also identified other areas that the delegation had concerns about, such as delivery delays.

“The cluster boxes, certain districts in particular where they’ve been losing mail, and of course the other one is whether they change the processing centers in Bismarck and Grand Forks and ship them into Fargo. That actually is part of a whole national review, so that’s in addition to the district-wide review that they did,” said Hoeven.

Hoeven said now that the delegation is interacting with the USPS, they are following up to make sure improvements actually happen. The pause that is in effect runs until January 2025, and Hoeven said he is optimistic that changes can be made by that deadline.

Hoeven said what he wants to do next is get the district managers from the mail delivery side and the processing side to come to North Dakota and have a public event for them to lay out the progress they are making, how they will make that progress, and answer questions.