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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 2019
End of shutdown leaves contract workers hanging
By JAY REEVES
Associated Press
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. —
Federal employees are turning
on offi ce lights and computers
and reopening national parks
and museums for the fi rst time
in weeks, but others employed
by government contractors
face still more uncertainty
over when they’ll resume
work or whether they’ll ever
be paid for time lost to the
stalemate over President Don-
ald Trump’s border wall.
For the hundreds of thou-
sands of people who work for
private companies that sup-
port government, the future
will be decided in part by
how quickly federal agen-
cies get running after the
record 35-day shutdown, the
fi ne print of contracts and the
kindness of strangers.
Michelle Oler of St. Louis
resorted to online fundrais-
ing to pay bills while side-
lined from her contracting job
processing rural development
claims for the Agriculture
Department, and she’s still
unsure when she’ll resume
work or receive money
to compensate for missed
paychecks.
“The estimate of what I’ve
lost fi nancially due to the shut-
down is upwards of $3,500.
The anxiety, sleeplessness and
depression make it feel like
much more,” Oler said Sun-
day in an interview by email.
Her GoFundMe page has
brought in only $50 so far.
Kevin Doyle, a father
of three, estimated he’s out
around $5,000 from his con-
tracting job as an encryp-
tion specialist at Laughlin
Air Force Base on the Tex-
as-Mexico border. He said he
didn’t sleep and lost weight
during the shutdown as both
the stress and the bills piled
up.
Doyle said he will return
to work today, but he starts a
new job Friday with another
company that he hopes will be
more stable if talks fail over
Trump’s demand for money
for a wall and another shut-
down begins next month.
“We were scraping pen-
nies and nickels together one
day to get the baby a Happy
Meal,” said Doyle, 40. “It’s
just that bad.”
The partial government
shutdown ended when Trump
backed off his demand that
Congress commit $5.7 bil-
lion for a U.S.-Mexico border
wall before federal agencies
could resume work. All or
parts of multiple federal agen-
cies were affected, with some
employees furloughed and
others forced to work with-
out pay.
The 800,000 federal work-
ers who were affected will
receive back pay, but con-
tractors don’t have the same
guarantee.
Jack Lyons, who was fur-
loughed from his contract job
providing technical support
at NASA’s Marshall Space
Flight Center in north Ala-
bama, didn’t miss a paycheck
during the shutdown. “I was
one of the lucky ones,” he
said.
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Gabriella Perez, left, attends a rally for her grandfather,
Ruben Vera Perez, who was detained by immigration
agents in Astoria in December.
Vigil held for man
detained by ICE
Dozens gathered
on Friday night
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
About 50 people with
teddy bears, candles and
American fl ags gathered at
the Astoria Riverwalk on
Friday in a vigil for Ruben
Vera Perez, an Astoria man
detained by immigration
agents in December.
The vigil was orga-
nized by local activists and
clergy to help raise money
to support Perez’s family
while he’s detained.
On Dec. 14, Ruben
Perez appeared in Circuit
Court downtown to han-
dle a probation matter.
Last year, Perez had been
arrested and charged with
drunken driving. Ruben
Perez was detained by
immigration agents while
his wife, Maria Perez, was
driving him to the jail to
check in with a pre trial
release offi cer.
“I don’t wish this feel-
ing on anybody,” Maria
Perez said at the vigil with
her daughter and grand-
daughter by her side.
A GoFundMe page is
being circulated by Indi-
visible North Coast Ore-
gon and a tamale fund-
raiser is being held by t he
Lower Columbia Hispanic
Council to help the fam-
ily pay bills while he’s
detained.
The teddy bears peo-
ple brought to the vigil will
be sent to U.S. Sen. Ron
Wyden in a call to bring
attention to detention pol-
icies in the United States.
“There has to be a better
way,” said Kit Ketcham, a
pastor at Pacifi c Unitarian
Universalist. “We call for
mercy, peace and hope.”
Trump doubts negotiators will strike budget deal he’d accept
By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Pres-
ident Donald Trump said the
odds congressional nego-
tiators will craft a deal to
end his border wall standoff
with Congress are “less than
50-50.”
As hundreds of thousands
of furloughed federal work-
ers prepared to return to
work, Trump told The Wall
Street Journal that he doesn’t
think the negotiators will
strike a deal that he’d accept.
He pledged to build a wall
anyway using his executive
powers to declare a national
emergency if necessary.
“I personally think it’s
less than 50-50, but you
have a lot of very good peo-
ple on that board,” Trump
said in an interview Sunday
with the newspaper.
The president was refer-
ring to a bipartisan com-
mittee of House and Senate
lawmakers that will consider
border spending as part of
the legislative process.
The president’s standoff
with Democrats on Capitol
Hill is far from over and the
clock is ticking. The spend-
ing bill Trump signed on
Friday to temporarily end
the partial government shut-
down funds the shuttered
agencies only until Feb. 15.
It’s unclear if the Dem-
ocrats will budge. Trump
seemed girded for battle
over the weekend, sending
out a series of online mes-
sages that foreshadowed the
upcoming fi ght with law-
makers. “BUILD A WALL
& CRIME WILL FALL!”
he tweeted.
Is Trump prepared to shut
down the government again
in three weeks?
“Yeah, I think he actu-
ally is,” acting White House
chief of staff Mick Mulvaney
said. “He doesn’t want to
shut the government down,
let’s make that very clear.
He doesn’t want to declare a
national emergency.”
But Mulvaney said that
at “the end of the day, the
president’s commitment is
to defend the nation and he
will do it with or without
Congress.”
The linchpin in the stand-
off is Trump’s demand for
$5.7 billion for his prized
wall at the U.S.-Mexico
border, a project Demo-
crats consider an ineffective,
wasteful monument to a
ridiculous Trump campaign
WANTED
promise.
Asked if he’d willing to
accept less than $5.7 bil-
lion to build a barrier on
the southern border, Trump
replied: “I doubt it.” He
added: “I have to do it right.”
He also said he’d be
wary of any proposed deal
that exchanged funds for a
wall for broad immigration
reform. And when asked if
he would agree to citizen-
ship for immigrants who
were illegally brought into
the U.S. as children, he
again replied, “I doubt it.”
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