U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, answers questions during a Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce event on Aug. 28, 2025, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. (Photo by Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)

U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, has requested an investigation into U.S. Postal Service delivery delays in South Dakota.

Rounds asked Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service Tammy Hull to find the “root cause” of mail problems in the state and consider the need for a regional processing facility in South Dakota, according to a news release Wednesday.

Newspaper officials told South Dakota Searchlight in May that it took over a week for some publications to travel less than 100 miles away, and others reported lost deliveries.

Rounds said the postmaster general told him earlier this year that processing facility issues in Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City caused mail delays in South Dakota, yet according to Rounds, none of those facilities handle South Dakota’s intrastate mail.

Small-town newspapers say mail delays are crippling their business

“I believe these issues are caused by the flawed design of the USPS network,” Rounds wrote in a letter to the Postal Service, “which all but guarantees that mail traveling across or to South Dakota must travel in a circuitous manner through locations around and outside of the state.”

In a September article from the Tri-State Livestock News, the company’s distribution manager Amy Oster said most newspapers being delivered to South Dakotans are sorted to Denver or Omaha. The Denver facility isn’t “equipped or updated to handle the additional mail supply,” Oster said. The newspaper invested in private drop-offs in some South Dakota zip codes for faster service.

The bulk of eastern South Dakota’s outgoing mail distributions were outsourced to Fargo and Omaha, the Dakota Scout reported in 2024.

Rounds added in the letter that, in addition to newspaper subscriptions, the delays are affecting mailed medicine.

Rounds, along with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Rep. Dusty Johnson, advocated against downsizing or reorganization of USPS processing in South Dakota last year, leading to the Postal Service pausing a controversial plan to downgrade the Huron processing center. Rounds introduced legislation to protect rural mail processing facilities and is carrying legislation to better inform constituents of proposed changes in service.