A new Postal Service proposal could slow down the mail. How long will you have to wait?

You might be waiting longer for that package to arrive under a proposal announced earlier this month by the U.S. Postal Service.

Under the proposed 10-year plan, a third of first class packages will be delayed up to five days, an increase from the existing first class service standard of one to three days.

The U.S. Postal Service, led by Postmaster Louis DeJoy who was appointed under then-President Donald Trump, contends the change is necessary because the existing service standards are unattainable.

That current standard requires a three-day delivery for any destination in the contiguous United States with a drive greater than six hours. As a result, the postal service relies on air transportation, which the agency argues is less reliable and more costly than ground transport.

In a statement announcing the proposed change, DeJoy characterized the changes as part of an effort to streamline service.

“Modifying select service standards is a key growth element and enabler of our 10-year plan, contributing to our top goal of meeting or exceeding 95% on-time delivery across all product classes, including the growing package market,” DeJoy said in a statement. “By implementing the elements of our 10-year plan, we will deliver the consistent, reliable service that the American people and our customers expect and deserve and grow package volume, spurring revenue growth that can be invested back into the Postal Service.”

Under the proposed change, mail traveling more than 931 miles, or 20 hours, will have a four-day delivery standard, while mail traveling more than 1,908 miles, or more than 41 hours, will have a five-day delivery standard.

In practice, this will affect 32% of first class packages, the U.S. Postal Service said.

The U.S. Postal Service has struggled for years with meeting its mission under budgetary constraints. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, instead funding those operations through the sale of postage, products and services.

The proposed change will result in the reversal of a projected $160 billion in losses over the next decade, according to a Postal Service statement.

“The plan’s growth and efficiency initiatives will spur cash flow and savings to make $40 billion in capital investments over the next 10 years — including $20 billion towards the Postal Service’s mail and package processing network, facility upgrades and procurement of new processing equipment,” according to the Postal Service.

The proposal has more than 20 attorneys general calling foul, arguing that it will slow down the mail to an unacceptable level, including important election-related mail.

“The U.S. Postal Service is a lifeline for millions of Americans and small businesses across the country,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “Reliable, timely deliveries make a difference when it comes to keeping a customer or exercising our right to vote. Shame on Postmaster General DeJoy for playing politics with our postal service, a nearly 250-year-old American institution. We respectfully urge the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission to reject this foolhardy proposal. You can’t fix something just by moving the goalposts. Our communities and the more than 600,000 postal workers nationwide deserve better.”

Bonta joined 20 other attorneys general, plus the city attorneys for San Francisco and New York City, in a comment letter condemning the proposed changes and calling on the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission to reject them.

“The Commission should urge the Postal Service to abandon this misguided effort and instead focus its attention on improving its performance in delivering first-class mail and other market-dominant products. It must examine the events of the past year to identify what went wrong with the implementation of its 2020 initiatives to ensure that similar failures do not recur. Only once the Postal Service has shown that it can reliably meet its performance targets should it consider whether it is necessary to change its service standards to address long-term trends in the utilization of its products,” the letter reads in part.

California is locked in litigation with the U.S. Postal Service as part of a multi-state lawsuit that seeks to block the Postal Service from implementing a series of policy changes that would result in the slower delivery of election mail. A federal judge in that case issued a preliminary injunction against those changes ahead of last year’s presidential election, which featured heavy mail-in ballot voting.

This story was originally published June 23, 2021 at 10:58 AM.