(The Center Square) – A winter storm expected to plummet the southern half of Georgia has led to closing and the delay of budget hearings.
The Joint Appropriations Committee was supposed to hear from Gov. Brian Kemp on the budget on Tuesday morning. Kemp will instead speak to the committee on Thursday, according to legislative leaders. State offices in Atlanta and the capitol building were closed Tuesday.
Kemp declared a state of emergency on Monday, a day before the storm was expected to arrive. The snow will likely miss the northernmost parts of the state but is predicted in areas not used to seeing it, like Macon and Columbus, he said. Counties in the southernmost part of the state could see up to one-tenth of an inch of ice from freezing rain, while the southeastern part of the state could have one-quarter of an inch.
“Our local communities in that part of the state and south are just not prepared like people are in metro Atlanta and the north part of the state,” Kemp said Tuesday in a news conference broadcast on Georgia Public Television. “We are going to give it everything we’ve got with everything we’ve got.”
The storm has a large potential for impact, said Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry. The state began brining roads on Sunday.
“I have to remind everybody that we cannot be everywhere at once,” McMurry said. “In fact, the I-20 below area consists of almost 25,000 miles of roadway if we were to treat just two lanes. To give you some perspective, that’s driving to LA (Los Angeles) and back to Atlanta six times.”
Kemp’s state of emergency runs through Jan. 28.