SOUTH DAKOTA (South Dakota Searchlight) – An audit report released Thursday recommends ways to improve mail service in South Dakota, and a member of the state’s congressional delegation said the report serves as “a reaffirmation that the mail service is worse than the Postal Service is suggesting.”
Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds made a request in December for an audit by the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General. The OIG is an independent agency within the Postal Service answering to the Postal Service Board of Governors.
“We’re definitely making progress,” Rounds said Thursday after reviewing the report. “The OIG agrees with South Dakotans that mail service is as bad as we have been saying it is for the last two years.”
Rounds has taken several other actions to pressure the Postal Service, including a hold on Senate confirmations of Board of Governors nominees. Rounds said Thursday he will keep the hold in place “until such time as I see results.”
One of the recommendations is determining the feasibility of bringing regional mail processing to the state. The Postal Service responded by saying it will upgrade a Sioux Falls processing plant to a regional processing and distribution center, which should keep most South Dakota mail in the state and reduce delivery time for some packages by one or two days. The service made that announcement Tuesday, two days before the report’s publication, and said the change will take effect in January.
The audit report is murkier on the timeline, saying the Postal Service expects to make the change “shortly after the turn of the calendar year,” but the plan’s “defined milestones, transportation schedules and operating changes” are being finalized with a target implementation date of June 30.
Problems caused by cost-saving measures
Problems in South Dakota are rooted in nationwide Postal Service actions undertaken several years ago to save money, according to the audit. Those actions have resulted in $755 million of transportation savings and have reduced other costs by about $2 billion, according to previous findings.
“However,” said the report, “network changes have significantly impacted the timeliness of mail delivery in South Dakota.”
One of the culprits is the consolidation of processing and distribution into 60 regional centers across the country, none of which was planned to be in South Dakota.
Meanwhile, a policy change dictates that mail originating in post offices farther than 50 miles from a regional center is no longer picked up the same afternoon. Instead, it’s picked up the next morning, “automatically adding an extra day before it is delivered,” the audit report said. Every post office in South Dakota is more than 50 miles from a regional center, because there is no regional center in the state, at least until the Sioux Falls plant’s upgrade is finalized.
Processing of some local mail has stayed within the state’s borders, but much of South Dakota’s mail began going elsewhere in early 2025 for processing at regional centers in Denver, Fargo and Omaha.
“As a result,” the report said, “intrastate mail that was previously processed within South Dakota must now travel hundreds of miles to up to seven states before re-entering the state.”
No communication of plans
The Postal Service failed to communicate about the impact to communities while moving more mail processing out of state, according to the audit.
The Office of the Inspector General for USPS recommended establishing “a required process to publicly communicate any impacts to mailers and residential customers, prior to implementation” when making changes to processing as significant as those that affected South Dakota. The Postal Service agreed with the recommendation and said it would implement it by August 2027, the report said.
Although South Dakotans were not informed of the changes that caused the problems in their state, they quickly began to notice and complain, especially about the delivery of medications and newspapers. The number of complaints reaching Rounds’ office numbered more than 1,000, he said.
The Office of Inspector General’s audit process included a public input opportunity that resulted in 509 comments.
“Public feedback confirmed widespread concerns,” the report said.
The office also conducted a data review, mailed 120 packages, and conducted observations and interviews at three processing facilities and 16 post offices.
Standards were watered down
Besides outlining the causes and effects of mail problems in South Dakota, the audit report explained that the Postal Service adjusted its self-imposed standards for mail delivery in the state to accommodate slower service. And yet, “even with additional days added to most service standards, the percent of mail delivered within those standards declined across all mail classes,” the audit report said.
The auditors recommended the Postal Service align its standards to appropriate delivery timeframes as mail is moved back in state for processing. The Postal Service agreed and is targeting June 30 for implementation.
All of the changes that negatively affected South Dakota were made, according to the audit, “without a state-level strategy.”
“Looking ahead,” the report said, “it will be essential for the Postal Service to evaluate modernization impacts not only at a national scale but in states — like South Dakota — where geography, distance and the absence of a centralized processing facility introduce operational risks.”
Rounds has some advice in the meantime for people voting by mail for the Nov. 3 general election in South Dakota, where advance voting started last week.
“Plan on getting it done a little ahead of time,” Rounds said.
Comments