By Melanie Payne, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Mar. 11--Sacramento would become one of a handful of places in the nation to require restaurants to publicly display health inspection reports under a proposal before county supervisors today.
The Environmental Health Division will also ask the County Board of Supervisors to approve:
Changing the frequency of inspections for most food facilities.
Requiring 'food school' for health code violators.
Hiring additional health inspectors and increasing fees.
County supervisors and representatives of the restaurant industry expressed concerns about fee increases, but the most contentious issue is a proposed ordinance to require about 4,400 county eateries to post a copy of their most recent health inspections in a 'conspicuous place' where patrons can view it without having to ask.
Richard Sanchez, the chief of the Environmental Health Division, said that numerous jurisdictions post grades or scores for restaurants, but he's aware of few that require the complete report to be posted.
Sanchez said that his department recognized that the public wanted some accountability for restaurant inspections. Posting the entire report, he said, was a better way than giving out grades which can unfairly penalize a restaurant for minor infractions.
County Supervisor Roger Dickinson hasn't decided if he supports posting inspection reports. A better solution, he said, may be to have it within easy access should a restaurant patron want to look at it.
State law requires every food establishment to post a sign saying the current health inspection report is available and to provide it on demand to patrons.
'We think that's a reasonable thing,' said John Dunlap, president and CEO of the California Restaurant Association, who opposes the division's proposal to post inspection reports.
The report is 'a snapshot in time,' Dunlap said, and restaurants shouldn't 'suffer' for a problem that may be easily corrected.
Dunlap is also opposed to the 80 percent fee increase the Environmental Health Division is proposing for the program. The county staff has said the additional income would pay for new personnel and educational programs.
Inspection fees will jump about 21 percent each year for the next four years. For example, a restaurant with a bar currently pays $551 a year for licensing fees, but will pay $667 in 2004; $809 in 2005; $978 in 2006 and $1,188 in 2007.
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(c) 2003, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
