When I first interviewed Student Affairs advertised their free busses as a staff benefit. Fast forward years later 12 months of a 31 day pass costs more than half my COLA.

As state employees we receive local link, city link, Subway, Light rail and some MTA commuter busses for free. Anyone who can’t afford the new UMBC Transit fares should reach out to receive their State Employee ID and utilize other methods to get to work.

Currently State of Maryland Employees are entitled to Free Mass Transit as part of the benefits program.

Some carve outs make sense, such as commuter busses serving D.C. and Special Event Busses.

The carveout I find odd is MARC service. Between the Camden Line and the Penn Line, MARC services many communities that serve the state government. Additionally, with this benefit being available to USM employees you have commuters to UMCP, Shady Grove, and Bowie State that are left underserved. Other institutions have even instituted bus services connecting their campuses to MARC stations.

While it is true that MARC services are bid out to operators such as Amtrak and Alstom, I believe many of the commuter bus services are also privately operated. Though I assume the bus contracts are less of a net loss (I haven’t been able to dig up the numbers) the expanded service and flexibility to state employees would have a greater benefit to the state.

Is there any backstory to how this came to be? Maybe it’s worth poking at again? It looks like AFSCME supported HB 201/SB 319 back in 2019, but I cannot find and press around these bills. Has there been any progress on the study to expand the program to MARC and WMATA?

Oh boy, it’s time for the heat wave to murder the NEC and its aging equipment.

At least, that’s my assumption.

My boi had a mechanical hatch open this evening

This guy survived last year’s fall and began to flower again this spring. I didn’t intend to keep it over the winter but it kept surviving and I kept watering it.

Overall, I’d like to learn how to better care for this now that it’s grown too big for its britches.

My first thought is tomato cage…

Whilst on the O to New Carrollton today, I noticed some older ad campaigns playing on the 7000 series screen.

Back2Good seems to be the crux of it all, with some late 2010’s animation and style. It seems all webpages and pdfs regarding the campaign are gone from the website :(

Long Time Listener, First Time Caller;

Trying to use some of the web reports and I like the look of Income v Expense (it reminds me of a Sources and Uses ledger), but my problem becomes that one of my employers includes the Employee ID (common) and the PP End Date (ex. EARLY PAY: STATE OF MD PAYROLL W[empl id] 013026). This causes YNAB to record the transaction under a new vendor/payee and this makes Income v Expense difficult to use.

Has anyone encountered this before and how have you cleaned up the data?

E 13th between 1st and A.