Mail

My husband and I have long used a post office box at the Roland Park post office for business mail. Our street address includes the letter “B,” which presents a problem for mail sorters and carriers, who don't know that our house is separate from the one next door with identical numbers, but no letter. The post office box has always been a prompt way to receive mail until recently. Mail addressed to our box now seems to arrive later than mail that comes to the house.

Years ago - 2008 to be exact - I wrote about a $336 million settlement that required Visa, MasterCard and Diner's Club to return foreign transaction fees paid by those traveling outside the country or who made overseas purchases online. The trio had been accused of hiding these transaction fees. They didn't admit any wrongdoing. At the time, I encouraged readers affected - those paying the fees from February 1996 to November 2006 - to fill out a claim. The refund was expected to take up to 18 months.

Holding an election is an expensive business. State and local governments must coordinate to recruit, train, supervise and pay civic-minded poll workers who come early and stay late to set up and tear down polling places all over Maryland, consuming millions of dollars from our state and county treasuries. Special elections, required by law to fill vacancies in county councils and the House of Representatives, are among the most expensive elections we run. Current law requires holding both primary and general "special" elections, requiring expenditures and planning similar to those of regular elections.

Two Monkton residents thanked Cockeysville police assistant commander Lt. Bob McGraw with a basket filled with fruit, cheese and crackers and snacks on Feb. 1. They commended McGraw and Baltimore County police for their quick actions after a string of house burglaries put Monkton in the news last month.   Many North County residents knew about the burglaries from a mass e-mail sent out by McGraw. He has 359 names on his e-mail tree and can zero in a particular neighborhood to send out notices, watches or warnings.

Social Security Administration will resume paper statements of estimated benefits to certain workers age 60 and up beginning next month, according to a letter from the agency's commissioner released this morning by two senators. In the letter dated Jan. 20, Social Security CommissionerMichael J. Astruesaid the agency will begin mailing paper statements to workers 60 and older next month. Additionally, workers at age 25 will receive a first-time paper statement by the end of this year that is accompanied by an explanation of the program.

Home values in Maryland communities reassessed by the state this year have fallen an average of 17 percent since 2008, a sizable drop but smaller than in the last two rounds of property evaluations. Nine out of 10 residential properties that were reassessed lost value, the state Department of Assessments and Taxation said Tuesday. Some homes were more valuable because their owners renovated. But assessors say they're seeing signs of stabilization in some neighborhoods - a new trend.

A former assistant vice president for M&T Bank in Baltimore has been charged with mail fraud, prosecutors said, after she defrauded a federal export credit agency and an international corporation to pay American Express bills and her taxes. Rosamaria T. Somarriba is accused of taking more than $223,000 between 2006 and 2011, according to a criminal information filed Dec. 19 in federal court for the District of Maryland. Somarriba worked in the bank's international trade finance division, according to the court filing.

Ever since Congress stupidly decided to make the U.S. Postal Service a quasi-private entity, the organization has been going steadily downhill. The arrangement has grossly inflated the ranks of upper and mid-level management, people who have nothing to do with the post office's actual mission of delivering the mail. On top of that, some upper management idiots decided to spend millions of dollars on changing the design of the Postal Service's logo and are now engaged in a massive TV advertising campaign to get people to ship more packages by USPS.

Most Americans are just an email, Tweet or Facebook update away from reaching someone else - or the entire world. And the trend is accelerating, as the number of email accounts alone is expected to grow by almost a billion worldwide from last year to 2014. Now, the U.S. Postal Service has practically conceded that it's being left in the digital dust. The Postal Service proposed Monday changing its first-class delivery standard so mail will arrive two to three days after it is shipped, rather than as early as overnight.

Baltimore City Councilwoman Belinda Conaway, who is running a write-in campaign to keep her seat in the Nov. 8 election, accused the city elections board Tuesday of committing "major fraud" by mailing out incorrect absentee ballots to 7th District voters. Conaway said she has confirmed that at least seven voters in her district received 6th District absentee ballots in the mail, and worries that the problem could be more widespread. Conaway said she sent a letter Tuesday to U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., asking him to intervene in the administration of the election.