Why was Fulton County court mail not delivered? Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff wants answers

U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Tuesday called for an investigation into the discovery this month of more than 1,000 official pieces of court correspondence dating back as far as 2021 that were not delivered.

Fulton County Clerk of Courts and Magistrate Courts Ché Alexander received the undelivered mail in a huge batch marked “return to sender” during the week of June 3 and notified Ossoff, who has been pressuring the U.S. Postal Service for months over delayed mail deliveries across Georgia.

“I want to emphasize the real human impact when Georgians don’t receive correspondence from the court,” Ossoff said during a news conference. “This impacts their liberty. This impacts their property. This impacts the official functioning of the courtroom.

“This impacts the judges’ docket. This can impact potentially overcrowding in the jail, disrupting the normal course of business for the court.”

Ossoff first raised the issue of delays in mail delivery in Georgia during a Senate committee hearing in April.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told the committee the delays were the result of problems encountered during the rollout last January of a restructuring plan aimed at making the postal service economically self-sufficient. The plan was first implemented at the regional mail processing center in Palmetto and at a second center in Richmond, Va.

To deal with the issue, DeJoy ordered a pause in the restructuring plan nationwide until at least the beginning of next year. To address the mail processing delays at the Palmetto facility, he brought in more than 100 employees from other processing centers and revised transportation schedules between Palmetto and other mail processing centers.

Ossoff is asking the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General to investigate the failure to deliver the Fulton County court correspondence and get back to him with answers.

“This and everything Georgians have been dealing with for the last six months demonstrate the urgent need for much more intense, much more robust, and much more sustained oversight of the U.S. Postal Service and its management,” Ossoff said Tuesday.

DeJoy reported last week in a letter to Ossoff that 64.5% of first-class mail the Palmetto facility handled between May 18 and May 24 was delivered on time, up from a mid-March low of just 35.8%. In addition, 82.9% of first-class mail during that period was delivered within one day of on time, DeJoy wrote.