Restaurateurs Get Help in Grade Fight

County officials charged with overseeing health inspections have suggested to food industry representatives ways in which they might help scrap a controversial proposal for posting inspection letter grades at restaurants and food counters.

Orange County’s environmental health office opposes the grading system, used in San Diego, Los Angeles and Riverside counties, in which inspectors give out A, B or C grades to food establishments. Consumer groups say the grades give the public valuable information.

The top two directors of the environmental health office, which has been preparing a report on the grading system for the county’s Board of Supervisors, met in June to discuss the proposal with the Food Sanitation Advisory Council, a group of food industry representatives set up to review health regulations.

Bill Ford, the assistant director, said he didn’t want a grading system “rammed down our throats,” but said the issue had become “political,” according to a transcript of the meeting obtained by The Times.

“[It] could have a negative impact on [the industry], and that is why I’m bringing it to [the council] and suggesting a report come from [the council] to the Board of Supervisors directly,” Ford said.

At another point in the meeting, Ford said, “We want to stay back from this. . . . If we can come up with a different idea [than grading], I’m open because we have to present it, but we have to present it in a carefully guarded impartial way to the board.”

Environmental health director Jack Miller told the council at the same meeting that the business community’s opposition to the grading system would “carry a lot of weight” with supervisors.

“Yes, the public does too, but you’re far more organized than the public is,” Miller said.

Miller and Ford did not return calls for this article.

But their comments to the food industry were criticized by several sources, who say it reflects a coziness between county regulators and those they oversee.

“It’s not the independent regulatory structure that you expect from government,” said Betsy Imholtz, director of Consumers Union’s West Coast office in San Francisco. “It’s unseemly. How can recommendations be reliable if they’re not developed independently?”

Miller and Ford were attempting to “make public policy and then hide behind it,” said William R. Mitchell, former chairman of the county chapter of Common Cause, a government watchdog group.

“They’re trying to create or actually subvert the policy set by the board,” Mitchell said. “It’s unbelievable that these guys are being this brazen about their closeness to the industry and their opposition to this [grading] policy.”

The environmental health office’s report, due this week, won’t be ready until the end of the month, according to Julie Poulson, interim director of the Health Care Agency, which oversees Miller’s department. The report will not include recommendations, she said, only options for improving the county’s food inspection system. A grading system will be among the options.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who pushed for the report in May, spoke to Poulson and County Executive Officer Janice Mittermeier about the comments of Miller and Ford. He said he now expects to “scrub this report with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Based on our reading of the transcript, the CEO and [Poulson] expressed great concern to me and have assured me that they will take the appropriate actions to make sure [the report] is unbiased,” Spitzer said.

Poulson said this week that she shared Spitzer’s concerns.

“Our sole goal is to provide an objective, unbiased report,” she said.

In his remarks to the food industry, Ford was specific in his opposition to the grading system, citing the potential for an adversarial relationship between county inspectors and the food industry. He also said letter grades give the public a false sense of security and represent a snapshot in time--the day the food establishment is inspected.

Devising a scoring system equitable to all types of food facilities is too tough, he said. And it increases the potential for bribery or the solicitation of bribes from Orange County’s 54 inspectors and 11,000 establishments.

Another downside is cost, he said.

“Any time you have to sit there and talk with an operator, post a grade, do the scoring in front of him, negotiate about the score, that adds costs,” Ford told the council. “And to maintain the same level of service, you’re going to have to add staff, which means more inspection fees.”

In Los Angeles County, which launched its grading system last year after a local television station aired an undercover news report on cockroach-infested restaurants, the program has won praise from both the industry and the public. More than 21,000 restaurants and 10,000 grocery stores are inspected annually.

“Everyone got on board quickly. There was hardly any resistance,” said Joel Bellman, a spokesman for Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who first pushed for a grading system. “The smart restaurant owners wanted to embrace this and saw that it could only help their customers and promote business.”

Los Angeles supervisors gave clear orders that the county health agency was to consult with the industry to get their input, said John Schunhoff, chief of operations in public health for the Department of Health Services.

“That didn’t say capitulate or give in to the industry,” Schunhoff said.

Schunhoff described the program as “overwhelmingly popular” both with the dining public and industry, which “values the A grade, because it brings in business more than if you get a B or C.”

No business establishment is immune from a low grade. Bellman said that when upscale dining establishments “are tagged” with a low grade, they try to clean up the violations as quickly as possible.