Hochatown, Oklahoma, is a 240-person community that shares a ZIP code with a larger city, Broken Bow, which sits 10 miles to the south. But the conflation has become a problem for Hochatown beyond mail delivery errors.
Dian Jordan, Hochatown’s former mayor and current board of trustees member, told NOTUS that when towns are clumped in with others by ZIP code, the communities could experience everything from ambulances getting sent to the wrong address to tourism dollars getting misdirected.
“You want your own culture and identity,” Jordan told NOTUS. “Because our culture is obviously very, very different than Broken Bow’s.”
Its leaders are now turning to Congress for a solution, but Hochatown is not the only municipality whose ZIP code could be determined by lawmakers. More than 70 municipalities across 22 states are lobbying for their own ZIP codes, and the bills that would grant them the designation appear to be stagnant in the Senate.
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Hochatown is on Choctaw Nation land and has been an established community since the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. In 2022, it was incorporated as a municipality, and its leaders have been trying to get it a ZIP code — used for everything from insurance purposes, emergency response, taxation and data collection on economic growth — since.
Hochatown is a member of the National ZIP Code Advocacy Coalition, a working group of community leaders hoping to use congressional power to get ZIP codes of their own. They’re lobbying Congress to use its power and override the decision-making of the United States Postal Service, which has denied their requests for ZIP codes.
Two pieces of legislation that would adjust the status of those dozens of communities passed the House in July – one unanimously and the other with majority-Republican support. But the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has not taken them up.
“It’s a longer story than I can go into now, but we are interested in it,” Sen. Rand Paul, the chair of the committee, told NOTUS about the ZIP code bills.
He referred NOTUS to committee staff, who did not respond to several requests for comment.
Many lawmakers are unsure why they’re stuck, even as there’s support for the proposals.
Hochatown specifically has the support of its two senators — Sens. James Lankford and Markwayne Mullin. Both have sponsored or co-sponsored bills that would grant Hochatown and North Enid, another Oklahoma town without a ZIP code, a ZIP code of their own.
“Those smaller communities that are connected to larger communities want to know that revenue is coming back to them, because that really does matter,” said Lankford.
Typically, the process of getting a new ZIP code goes through the U.S. Postal Service. But according to Alexander Fung, whose city of Eastvale, California, leads the National ZIP Code Advocacy Coalition, many of the communities included in the bills have already submitted letters and appeals to USPS, only to receive a letter stating that their request has been denied.
USPS referred NOTUS to a letter from David Steiner, the postmaster general and CEO at USPS, to Paul, in which Steiner said that passing the legislation through the Senate would cost the postal service at least $800 million upfront. According to the letter, they would need $500 million to create a new 12-digit ZIP code system, though towns like Hochatown already had a ZIP code prior to being incorporated as a municipality.
“The Postal Service cannot afford a significant upfront and ongoing financial burden of this magnitude for collateral uses of the ZIP code,” Steiner wrote.
Steiner acknowledged in his letter that ZIP codes serve more functions than simply delivering the mail, but the USPS has been unwilling to accommodate a swath of towns and cities included in the legislation, arguing that many of the reasons for needing them are not related to mail delivery.
But according to Fung and Jordan, both communities still experience problems with mail being delivered or rerouted, among other issues.
“Eastvale is virtually missing because of the fact that we don’t have a ZIP code that would designate our city,” Fung told NOTUS.
Nonetheless, Fung said he remains optimistic about being able to get the bills through Congress.
“I know there are cities from Florida, from Wisconsin or from Iowa that have been working at this for 50 years. And I’m not kidding,” Fung said. “This is the furthest that any of us have gone, being able to get the House’s support.”
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Editor’s note: This story has been updated to to better reflect the potential risks of a town without a ZIP code as listed by Dian Jordan.
This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and Oklahoma Watch.
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