House passed the Avon post office renaming 251 days ago and it is still not law

The Postal Service facility at 80 Prospect Street in Avon, New York, still carries its ordinary name in federal law. The House of Representatives voted on December 9, 2025 to change that name to the "Officer Anthony Mazurkiewicz Memorial Post Office Building," for a Rochester police officer who died in July 2022. As of August 17, 2026 - 251 days after the vote - the designation is not law.

H.R. 323 designates the Avon facility under that memorial name. The bill as introduced also provides that references to the facility across federal laws, maps, regulations, documents and records shift to the memorial name automatically, so no separate cleanup measure is needed once it is enacted.

The claim

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY-24) introduced the bill on January 9, 2025, according to the bill-status record published by the Government Publishing Office. After the House acted, a statement went out treating enactment as the next step: "I thank my colleagues for overwhelmingly supporting this effort and look forward to seeing this bill signed into law." Spectrum News 1 published that statement in its December 10, 2025 report on House passage. The excerpt captured for this article carries the statement without a speaker line; the identification of Tenney as the speaker comes from that report's framing rather than from the excerpt itself. The same report records that the officer served in law enforcement for 35 years before his death in July 2022, and that the bill was proceeding to the Senate.

The family had made the same ask earlier, in local coverage of the renaming effort. 13WHAM in Rochester carried the words of the officer's widow - again, the excerpt captured here has no speaker line, and the identification follows the story's framing and the speaker's own words: "My husband was a hero, and he made the ultimate sacrifice to keep our communities safe." The designation, the speaker said, "will leave a lasting memorial in his name and preserve his legacy in his hometown of Avon."

The record

The status file for H.R. 323 lists every action taken on the bill, with dates. It was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the day of introduction. A markup session was held on April 30, 2025, and the committee ordered the bill reported by a recorded vote of 23 to 15 - a divided roll on a tribute bill that would later draw no audible opposition on the floor.

That floor action came more than seven months later. Rep. Gill of Texas moved to suspend the rules and pass the bill on December 9, 2025; the House proceeded with forty minutes of debate under suspension, agreed to the bill by voice vote, and laid the motion to reconsider on the table without objection. The Senate received the bill the next day, read it twice, and referred it to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. That committee ordered it reported without amendment favorably on August 6, 2026, 239 days after the referral. The status record shows nothing after that.

This is also the second attempt, a fact absent from the coverage reviewed for this piece. Tenney introduced the same renaming as H.R. 3828 in the 118th Congress on June 5, 2023. It was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability that same day, and the status file for that bill records no action after the referral: it never passed the House and never became law. Measured from the first introduction, the request has been pending for more than three years.

The December 9 debate is preserved in the Congressional Record at pages H5093 to H5094. Remarks entered there describe the honoree as an American hero who gave 35 years to upholding justice and the rule of law, and separately state that "Officer Anthony Mazurkiewicz was born in 1967 and was a 29-year veteran of the Rochester Police Department." The two service figures are not in conflict: the 35-year count covers a law enforcement career, the 29-year count covers service with one department. Another line from the same debate frames the purpose of the bill: "A grateful community should always find ways to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in its service."

The throughput problem

A Congressional Research Service report on naming post offices through legislation supplies the historical baseline. "During the 108th through 112th Congresses, almost 20% of all statutes enacted were post office naming acts," the report states. It also describes how the House handles them: rather than formally approving each one in a meeting, "committee staff keep a list of naming bills" and similar measures suitable for suspension of the rules or unanimous consent, to be taken up when floor opportunities appear. The report notes an earlier, informal committee policy of withholding approval of a naming bill until every member from that state had cosponsored it.

Set that baseline against current output. A public compilation of the acts of the 119th Congress records 102 public laws and 2 private laws enacted since January 3, 2025, and lists among them a designation for the Postal Service facility at "201 West Oklahoma Avenue in Guthrie, Oklahoma." By that listing, post office designations account for roughly one percent of this Congress's public laws, against the near-20 percent share the CRS report describes for the 108th through 112th.

What follows is analysis, grounded in the records cited above. The delay is institutional rather than particular to this bill. Nothing in the record shows a member opposing the designation on the floor: the House disposed of it by voice vote and tabled reconsideration without objection, and the Senate committee reported it without amendment. What the record does show is a measure that needs floor time nobody has yet given it, in a Congress whose enacted output includes far fewer namings than the historical pattern. The sponsor's expectation of a signature was reasonable on its face; the calendar is what has not cooperated.

The next checkable steps are specific. The bill sits on the Senate calendar after the August 6, 2026 order to report; the questions a reader can test are whether the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee files a written report, and whether the Senate takes the bill up by unanimous consent. The compilation of acts records that the 119th Congress ends on January 3, 2027. If the Senate has not passed H.R. 323 and the President has not signed it by that date, the bill dies with the Congress and the Avon renaming will require a third introduction in 2027 - the same outcome H.R. 3828 met in 2024.