The U.S. Postal Service has some big, national-scale problems that have been only partially resolved by recent federal reforms. But that doesn’t mean it should not be able to resolve local delivery problems.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and Reps. Matt Cartwright and Dwight Evans recently demanded that Postmaster Louis DeJoy address some specific problems in Pennsylvania, and offered a reminder of why the service remains crucial despite the increasing loss of first-class mail volume to the internet.

They detailed long delivery delays in several areas of the state, and noted that the mail includes paychecks, medical supplies, time-sensitive government forms and applications and, currently, hundreds of thousands of election ballots that voters receive in the mail and then mail to their county election offices to be counted.

At a recent hearing in Philadelphia, several residents detailed incidents of envelopes being delivered open, with money or documents missing, and 2,000 pieces of mail from the Germantown post office being dumped in a lot.

In Northeast Pennsylvania, the legislators wrote, they have received repeated complaints about late deliveries through 30 different post offices.

Congress passed a law this year to improve postal service finances, focused on big, systemic problems such as the former requirement for the service to finance retiree health care benefits decades in advance.

— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre via TNS