Greta: What do Atlanta's snow plan and the HealthCare.gov website have in common?

Greta: What do ATL snow plan, HealthCare.gov have in common?

'Off the Record', 1/29/14: Saying that Atlanta appeared ill-prepared for the snow and ice is an understatement

By Greta Van Susteren

Let's all go "Off the Record" for a minute. I won't tell you who, but I got an email today which asked this very simple question: "Did the people who built HealthCare.gov design Atlanta's snow and ice plan?"

Ouch. Being somewhat of a snob - I'm from Wisconsin - and hearing all the problems in and around Atlanta, I figured they must have gotten buried in feet and feet of snow, right? 3 feet? 5 feet?

No. I did some checking. It wasn't feet. It was inches and only 2.6 inches. The citizens of Atlanta are getting absolutely clobbered, stranded. They are cold, no food. Many still aren't home tonight. So, where was the local government? How does the local government fail its people like that when it's only 2.6 inches?

I dug a little deeper. I learned that recently, Atlanta bought all the snow removal equipment, spending $2.5 million on it. So, ask yourself, what was the point of that? If you are not going to use it effectively to help your citizens, was the purchase sort of just like practice to see if they could copy federal government waste? Buy something with taxpayer money that the local government didn't know how to use or didn't use?

And don't tell me the local government got caught off-guard with this storm, that this storm was a big surprise. Even we here on ON THE RECORD, we knew the snow was coming. Remember our "Speed Read" on Monday night?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VAN SUSTEREN: And now even the Deep South is preparing for a rare snow and ice storm starting tomorrow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Preparing? Well, not exactly. We sure need to correct that one. Obviously, the state and local government were not preparing so we do apologize for that overstatement. That was a mistake.

That's my "Off the Record" comment tonight. If you have an important story or issue you think I should take "Off the Record," go to GretaWire.com and tell us about it.