Alaska's Senator Begich added his name to a letter sent to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe asking him to extend the moratorium on the closure of rural post offices throughout the country.

Earlier this year, the postal service came up with a cost saving plan that entailed shutting down among others across the nation, 36 post offices in the state of Alaska. The closures were fought by Alaska’s delegation to Washington, and as a result, 31 of those post offices were taken off of the Postmaster General’s chopping block.

Five of those post offices did not get removed from the list. The five post offices remaining were Ft. Wainwright, Eielson AFB, J-BER, the Anchorage postal store in the 5th Avenue Mall, and the post office in Douglas, Alaska.

The moratorium for closing post offices is quickly coming to its end, that date is May 15th.

40 Senators have penned a letter to the Postmaster General asking him to delay taking action in his plan until the postal reform bill, currently in the House and passed in the Senate last week, is enacted.

The bill essentially re-sets the postal service, this would help stave off the closures of postal facilities in rural areas by drastically changing operations of USPS.

In their letter to Donahoe, Senators pointed out tha the bill would add flexibility to the USPS helping the organization to get back on the road to financial stability, and that the moratorium should be extended until that postal reform legislation could take effect.

The letter also pointed out that in many areass, people relied on the USPS to keep them connected to entities outside of their small communities.

The letter in its entirety can be read here.