Mo' money

Don't know if you ever remember the Wayans brothers skit from the old tv show "In Living Color"?

I remember one about how to make money "from the guvuhmint." In their case it was reselling food stamps, which used to happen a lot, before the provision of the food stamp benefit was shifted to EBT cards. (This recurring skit led to the movie...) See "GAO-02-332 Food Stamp Program: Implementation of Electronic Benefits Transfer Systems."

Yesterday's Post reports on fraudulent resale of transit benefits, in "GAO Finds Fraud in Commuter Program," subtitled "Federal Workers Selling Transit Cards." I didn't realize that many agencies were providing these benefits the old fashioned way, with cards that could be easily resold.

The people I know get such benefits via their SmarTrip card, which you aren't going to sell. There is no reason to not require that TransitCheck users use SmarTrip. That would eliminate most cases of fraud immediately.

Anyway, this doesn't make transit marketing look good. I think they should prosecute those people misusing this benefit.

And hey, why are workers getting free parking...?