The current issue of the Postal Bulletin contains all 85 of the post office discontinuance announcements that had been omitted from two earlier issues because there were too many of them, plus nine more that hadn’t been announced. All of these discontinuances were for post offices that had been closed by emergency suspension many years ago.

As discussed in this previous post, back in September, the Postal Service introduced a new policy for the Bulletin. “Due to the extensive number of offices on the Discontinuance List” and in order  to keep publication costs down, there would be a limit on the number of discontinuance announcements in any given issue. In these case, the discontinuances would instead be announced on PostalPro, a website used primarily by business mailers.

As a result of the new policy, 85 post office discontinuances were not announced in the Postal Bulletin (all of them for post offices suspended many years ago), despite that fact that publication of discontinuances in the Bulletin is required by federal regulations.

As part of its annual compliance review, the Postal Regulatory Commission asked the Postal Service about the new policy and how it conformed with the regulations. The Postal Service responded that it “currently plans to publish the list referenced in this information request in a future edition of the Postal Bulletin.”

The Commission then asked another round of questions, including when this future edition would be published and what the policy would be going forward.

In a filing today with the Commission, the Postal Service responded: “The list of discontinued office was published on February 9, 2023, in Postal Bulletin No. 22617. In the future, lists of discontinued Post Offices will be printed in the Postal Bulletin.”

Nuff said.