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Corrections Officers Worried About Tuition, Health Insurance Payments During Shutdown

BOSTON (CBS) - The bills are piling up for Matt Ford, and it's not that he doesn't want to pay them. "Taking it day by day, but trying to look ahead," he said.

The outlook for the Devens correctional officer, also a single father of three children, is bleak having now missed two paychecks. He may have to pull his oldest son out of college, if he can't soon come up with an outstanding tuition balance.

Matt Ford
Matt Ford and his family. (WBZ-TV)

"It's tough, the last thing I want to do is something that might affect his future," Ford says. He's working a second job at night on little sleep, coming home from Devens, helping his children with dinner and homework, and then working until 3:00 a.m. only to get up three hours later for his corrections job.

It's a similar stress for Patrick Brady, also a Devens correctional officer. That stress is compounded by his wife Marlena's physical health. She contracted breast cancer while pregnant with their now 15 month old daughter Alana, and there are potential concerns about insurance payments. "My wife's health is the biggest concern," Brady said. "The unneeded stress is something that could be detrimental to her recovery."

Patrick Brady
Patrick Brady and Alana (WBZ-TV)

There's no end in sight with the fight over funding for a border wall. Both Ford and Brady are required to work without pay or face discipline. Trying to make more pay is making parenting difficult for Matt Ford. "Dad has to do so much to provide what the government is not providing for him right now," said Ford.

Both officers find it difficult to answer the question about how much longer that they can go without being paid. There's little coming from Washington to help answer it as well, especially with two competing bills that would have ended the government shutdown today rejected by the Senate.

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