Toward improving rural newspaper delivery, U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) on May 21 signed on as the lead original cosponsor of a bill to incentivize more reliable postal service while limiting rate increases.
“Our common-sense bipartisan legislation helps protect rural newspapers and consumers from unjustified price hikes by making certain USPS [the U.S. Postal Service] is held to a standard for on-time deliveries,” Sen. Rounds said on Monday.
The Deliver for Democracy Act, S. 4378, which is sponsored by U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) and seven other original cosponsors, including U.S. Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), would require on-time delivery of periodicals to unlock additional rate authority, according to the bill’s text.
“Local journalists work hard every day to deliver news on a timely basis and the U.S. Postal Service should too,” said Sen. Rounds.
“Periodical rates have cumulatively increased by over 40 percent since August 2021,” he added. “Meanwhile, the Postal Service’s on-time delivery performances have not improved, leaving local journalists to pick up the slack by handling delivery on their own in order to make certain their readers receive their papers on time.”
If enacted, S. 4378 would require the USPS to either achieve at least a 95 percent on-time delivery rate for periodicals or an improvement of at least two percentage points to unlock its 2 percent surcharge authority for that class of mail, says a summary provided by Sen. Rounds’ staff.
The bill also would direct the USPS to annually report to the Postal Regulatory Commission on its progress in including on-time delivery data for newspapers in its periodical service performance measurement, and task the Government Accountability Office with conducting a study for Congress on options for alternate USPS pricing schemes to improve the financial position of periodicals, the summary says.
“The Deliver for Democracy Act would help local news stave off extinction by requiring USPS to meet reasonable on-time delivery standards before raising rates,” Sen. Welch said. “It’s time for USPS to remember its mission and meet the media’s basic needs.”
S. 4378 is supported by the South Dakota NewsMedia Association, the National Newspaper Association, and the News/Media Alliance.