News travels fast about Sarbanes-Oxley compliance—unless, apparently, you’re in Clovis, New Mexico.

The Clovis News Journal—paper of record for Clovis, population 37,200—announced last week that it could no longer deliver two newspapers to its subscribers around eastern New Mexico on the day of publication. The reason? Sarbanes-Oxley.

“Due to the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act and its required implementation locally by the U.S. Postal Service, the Portales and Clovis post offices no longer can provide same-day mailed service of the Portales News-Tribune and the Clovis News Journal,” read a Jan. 19 post on the News Journal Website from circulation director Mike Grigg.

When reached by phone—because, really, a story like this is too good not to investigate—Grigg recounted the full tale. Previously, the News-Journal delivered papers to the local post offices by 4 a.m. for same-day delivery to subscribers via mail carrier. At the end of December, however, the local post offices informed Grigg that since those offices are not “24-hour business mail entry units,” then SOX compliance rules dictate that the offices cannot accept the newspaper mailing until 10 a.m. And since the local mail carriers head out to their delivery routes before then, the News-Journal would not reach subscribers until the following day.

Saturday and Sunday papers aren’t mailed until Tuesday, Griggs adds. The delays affect roughly 410 subscribers.

The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 does require the U.S. Postal Service to comply with parts of SOX, including the internal control report required under Section 404, beginning with the annual report for fiscal 2010. The government’s fiscal year began last October, so the Postal Service would indeed be in the midst of Section 404 compliance right about now.

Grigg told Compliance Week that he believes the issue is the result of the post office “misinterpreting the SOX requirements.” Grigg said he’s been in touch with the regional postal headquarters in Albuquerque, N.M., and “is hoping to get the problem fixed.”

Jerry Carlton, a supervisor in the Clovis post office declined to comment and referred Compliance Week to the Albuquerque district post office. A call to that office was not returned.

However, Robert Bokor, manager of mail classification in the Postal Service Pricing and Classification Service Center in New York, tells Compliance Week that the problem “isn’t a SOX issue at all.”

“I have no idea how anyone got the idea that it was, but it has nothing to do with SOX,” Bokor said in a phone interview. He figures the issue is a “misunderstanding” between the local paper and the local post office, but that both parties are “working to straighten it out.”

And for anyone from Clovis who hasn’t heard the news yet: the Eastern New Mexico Zias beat Midwestern State the other night, 70-56. Just thought you’d want to know.