Michael Pope reports
When the pandemic began in 2020, Virginia started adding an extra $300 a week to unemployment benefits. It was an effort to help people through a very difficult period, although some conservatives criticized the extra money as paying people to stay unemployed.
Now Republican Senator Steve Newman of Bedford County says it s time to end the extra payments. “If we don t do this, we re going to continue to come up with additional deficits that we re going to have to fund at a later time, Newman said Monday, and you end up with a situation where we re actually paying people not to go back to work.
Michael Pope reports
Now that Governor Ralph Northam has amended legislation legalizing marijuana so that it ll be effective this summer, lawmakers get another crack at it. They get an up or down vote when they meet next week, and House members are widely expected to approve the amendments. But then there are the Senate Democrats.
Credit Va Capitol Police Twitter Page; @VaCapitolPolice People smoke marijuana to get high, Senator Chap Petersen says. The Democrat from Fairfax City is opposed to creating a new legal industry for marijuana. Marijuana is somewhat unique in that the purpose of smoking it is to create an altered mental state, and that may be fine on your own time but once you legalize something people have the ability to pretty much use it anytime they want.
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Michael Pope reports.
Franchesca Hylton is worried about her husband, who’s an inmate at Virginia s one and only private prison in Lawrenceville. He has a heart condition, and since he has been at Lawrenceville he hasn t gotten the proper care, Hylton explained. It wasn t up until recently that he was able to go see his cardiologist. And because of the lack of medical attention that he has gotten, it has fatally gotten worse.
The Lawrenceville Correctional Center is the only privately-operated prison in Virginia.
Credit geogroup.com
Hylton testified before a Senate committee in favor of a bill that would end the ability of the Department of Corrections to enter into contracts with companies like the GEO Group, a Florida-based company that operates the prison.