Keep mail center in Nevada, state leaders urge Postal Service

Nevada’s elected leaders are urging the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors to intervene and reverse a Postal Service decision to downsize and relocate its outgoing mail process operations in Reno to Sacramento.

In a letter sent Thursday, Gov. Joe Lombardo, Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto and Rep. Mark Amodei further expressed their concerns about the plan the U.S. Postal Service announced it was moving forward with in April.

Elected officials on both sides of the aisle representing Northern Nevada have pushed back on the plan since it was introduced in March. Officials said they worry it could delay Northern Nevadans from receiving important mail as well as impact Nevada’s elections that rely heavily on on-time mail service. They also worry the plan would impact the local economy and jobs.

The bipartisan group of Nevada officials claim in Thursday’s letter that the USPS failed to directly address their concerns, particularly the impact to timely processing of mail ballots and an analysis of how weather and geographic conditions between Reno and Sacramento would impact service.

“We are increasingly concerned that our calls for oversight, information, and engagement from USPS have fallen on deaf ears,” they wrote. “We feel that our repeated requests for the data that informed USPS asserts that the plan to downsize the Reno facility will not impact service in Nevada have been reasonable.”

Rosen, Lombardo, Cortez Masto and Amodei wrote that the Board of Governors should not allow Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to proceed with downsizing Nevada’s Reno processing and distribution center without Nevada-specific data.

“Finally, if you feel that the Postmaster General has served as an active impediment to conducting meaningful oversight, then it is time to seriously consider who leads the USPS in the future,” they wrote.

The Postal Service has said that the decision follows a thorough business review and solicitation of public feedback. The decision will not impact Southern Nevada, as that mail is handled in Las Vegas.

Consolidating operations would allow the Reno processing center to be “co-located” with a sorting and delivery center, which would allow the Postal Service to provide faster and more reliable delivery over a larger area, according to the Postal Service.