RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe said he supported a House Appropriations Committee recommendation to give state employees and state-supported employees a 1 percent pay raise. The proposal would also give teachers a 1 to 2 percent pay raise and restore overtime for Virginia State Police officers. He talked about his support on WRVA1140’s “Ask the Governor” program with host Jimmy Barrett in Richmond.
One caller asked McAuliffe if he supported legalizing the recreational use of marijuana in Virginia. He said he’s “not there yet," and said he has kids of his own and he was not sure how he’d feel about them smoking weed. He said he wanted to see how legalizing marijuana in other states affected crime and revenues.
He added he did support medical marijuana use.
Barrett asked McAuliffe how he felt about an effort to expand Virginia's DNA database to include any person convicted of a misdemeanor. Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Harding said if University of Virginia student Hannah Graham's alleged abductor Jesse Matthew had been in the system after being convicted of a misdemeanor in 2010, that might have tied him to an alleged rape in Fairfax five years earlier.
Sheriff Harding said Matthew would have been behind bars and Hannah would still be alive today. However, the governor expressed reservations about expanding the database.
"When you start getting into misdemeanors, I think you have the potential of infringing on an individual's rights," Gov. McAuliffe said. "Jaywalking; speeding. All the sudden they're gonna take your DNA because you may have had a speeding ticket?!"
We also asked Gov. McAuliffe a not-so-serious question: Who is going to win this Sunday’s Superbowl?
"Seattle, baby! How can you stop (Richmond’s) Russell Wilson?”
