The United States Postal Service provided a media tour Thursday of its new processing center in Missouri City after residents in the Houston area experienced mail delays earlier this year.

Medications, wedding dresses and other packages were often weeks late. And Houston-area representatives of Congress were mediating between residents and the postal service for most of the delays.

John DiPeri, the vice president for regional processing operations in USPS’ western processing region, led reporters throughout the South Houston Local Processing Center (LPC) in Missouri City. DiPeri said he wanted to be in town when the tour happened.

“There’s been major construction going on, a lot of equipment going in, a lot of cement work going in, a lot of planning,” he said. “So we wanted to bring it in when it was safe enough to bring a crew in, it was organized to where we could bring in and show you a good tour.”

A press release from the postal service states the South Houston facility officially opened for operations in late March. An audit released last month found the same facility was opened in November with temporary staff for a “peak season annex.” The same audit found more than 380,000 delayed parcels during an inspection in January.

DiPeri said Houston-area residents saw mail delays earlier this year because of new technology and the construction happening at the facility.

“We learned that we need to be precise in our planning, have better communications, have well-trained people, and have better communications with our suppliers, and understand the supply chain better,” DiPeri said.

The Delivering for America plan is a 10-year initiative the postal service has been working on to increase efficiency. Part of the plan included replacing some of the machinery at the South Houston facility with newer mail sorters. Local leaders found out in a meeting with the National Association with Postal Supervisors that there were also staffing shortages and transportation issues.

“I apologize for that poor service that we had in the beginning of the year,” DiPeri said. “Our jobs are to collect, process, and deliver the mail and we take that really seriously. So we have brought the right people, the right leaders, right leadership, right employees … to assure as we’re going through this modernization we’ll maintain a service and efficiency.”

DiPeri said since January, over 100 employees have been added to work at the processing center. Construction and modernization is expected to continue until mid-August, when 500 people will be working at the building.

FARGO — A Missouri Valley Football Conference program is set to leave the conference and join a Football Bowl Subdivision league.

Missouri State announced Friday, May 10, the it has accepted an invitation to join Conference USA as a full-league member starting July 1, 2025.

Missouri State is currently a member of the Missouri Valley Football Conference and the Missouri Valley Conference, its primary league. Conference USA is an FBS league for football. North Dakota State and University of North Dakota football teams play in the Missouri Valley Football Conference.

“We are so excited for the opportunities that CUSA membership will bring to our university, our student-athletes, our coaches and our fans,” said Missouri State Director of Athletics Kyle Moats in a release. “This move represents a transition to a national brand and a platform that will help raise the profile of Missouri State University and the city of Springfield. The steps we have taken over the past 15 years to invest in a successful broad-based athletics program have prepared us for this long-awaited moment.”

The MVFC, an FCS conference, will have 11 members for the 2024 season and 10 members in 2025 after Missouri State exits the league. Western Illinois is slated to move into the Ohio Valley Conference starting in 2024.

“This move will absolutely open doors for us,” Moats explained. “For our student-athletes, they will have less bus travel and more flights which will get them back to campus in a safer and more-timely manner. They will also have more financial resources at their disposal for cost of attendance, Alston funds, and a more strategic presence in the name, image and likeness (NIL) space.”

North Dakota State joined the Missouri Valley Football Conference in 2008. Missouri State had been a league member since 1985.

Check back for more updates on this story.

Peterson covers college athletics for The Forum, including Concordia College and Minnesota State Moorhead. He also covers the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks independent baseball team and helps out with North Dakota State football coverage. Peterson has been working at the newspaper since 1996.

With passage of a $51.7 billion budget Thursday, the Missouri Senate beat the constitutional deadline by 24 hours after a debate that left Republican leaders exhausted but satisfied.

A 41-hour filibuster stalled all work last week – including planned budget debates on a committee-passed spending plan. To make the deadline, Senate Appropriations Chairman Lincoln Hough began negotiating with House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith last week on what should be removed from the Senate plan, and what the House would accept from it, to get bills that would pass both chambers.

The 17 spending bills passed during Thursday’s eight-hour debate – one for the remainder of the current fiscal year, the rest for the year that begins July 1 – will be up for a vote in the House on Friday.

But even before the Senate began voting, Gov. Mike Parson said the rushed work means his budget office hasn’t had time to review it. He told reporters he will not leave large unfunded needs for his successor to cover.

The budget needs to have the money required for the coming year because he leaves office in January, Parson said.

“We’re not going to do the largest supplemental (budget) in our state’s history,” Parson said. “I just don’t plan on doing that because all you’re doing then is just passing it on to the other legislators that are going to be coming in with the next governor.”

Hough had to navigate a Senate that has been dysfunctional all year because of Republican factional fighting in order to put the upper chamber’s stamp on a spending plan that arrived from the House a week later than normal.

Most of the debate on Thursday was consumed by members of the Missouri Freedom Caucus, who argued the budget spent too much, circumvented the regular process and gave legislators little time to scrutinize it.

Hough also had to endure criticism that delays in getting the budget on the Senate floor put him in the weakest position for negotiations with the House of any recent appropriations chairman.

“This was begging by the Senate appropriations chair to the House chair to take a budget to avoid a special session,” said Sen. Bill Eigel a Weldon Spring Republican and candidate for governor. “The Senate chair realized he had no leverage.”

Hough, a candidate for lieutenant governor, defended the budget he crafted during intense talks with Smith.

“This budget is not built around the mentality you have, which is just to beat somebody into submission,” he said to Eigel.

The total budget is about halfway between the $50.7 billion spending plan passed in the House last month and the $53 billion proposal Hough and the Senate Appropriations Committee approved. It is also about $1 billion less than the budget proposed in January by Parson.

The bills call for spending $15.3 billion in general revenue, with $14.6 billion for agency operations. That is about $287 million more than Parson proposed and $424 million more than the House-approved budget.

The budget for the current fiscal year, including the supplemental appropriations approved in the Senate, is $53.5 billion, with $15.8 billion in general revenue spending.

The budget includes a 3.2% pay raise for state employees, a 3% boost in funding for state colleges and universities and $727.5 million for improvements to Interstate 44, half from general revenue and half from new state debt.

Most of the money Hough added to the budget to boost salaries at agencies that provide support for adults with developmental disabilities did not survive negotiations. Instead of a $325 million boost to those programs to allow agencies to pay $17 an hour, the increase was pared back to $74 million. Whether that will allow any pay increases was unclear in the hours after the Senate votes.

There were seven to nine Republican votes against all but two of the bills. The five members of the Freedom Caucus were often joined in opposition to the spending bills by Sens. Mary Elizabeth Coleman of Arnold, who is running for secretary of state, Jill Carter of Joplin, who quit the Freedom Caucus last week, and  Mike Moon of Ash Grove.

That left 15 to 17 members of the Republican majority in favor of the bills, meaning none of the spending bills would have passed without the help of Democrats.

Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo was quick to note that votes from his caucus made the difference.

“They needed our votes on every single bill outside of two, and they even voted against the agriculture budget, which was pretty interesting for us,” Rizzo said. “ So Ag funding was propped up by Democrats this year, so the agricultural community, your welcome. Thank Democrats.”

Prior to the debate, members of the Freedom Caucus demanded that general revenue spending not exceed the projected revenue for the coming year of $13.2 billion. Hough insisted that there is enough money in construction and other projects, as well as in agency funding designated as one-time appropriations, to meet that. 

The difference between the projected revenue and the planned spending will come from a massive surplus that has accumulated in the treasury. In all funds that can be spent like general revenue, it is about $6.4 billion.

During debate, Eigel said the surplus should not be used to balance the budget.

“Balance means that the revenues coming in equal the revenues going out,” Eigel said. “Cash in your savings account is not a revenue item.”

The Missouri Constitution makes it clear that accumulated surpluses can be included in the budget plan.

Demanding a budget target regardless of other resources or the needs of the state is an argument designed to win political points, not govern responsibly, Rizzo said to reporters after the budget debate.

He said he expects Parson to eventually call a special session to add money so programs can operate through the year.

“Some of the Freedom Caucus members were pretty insistent on getting to a certain number,” Rizzo said, “and I think the way that they got to that certain number will probably make sure that there’s a special session sometime in the future, maybe in the fall.”