Prop. 95--Healthful or Destructive?

Armed with only a flashlight, thermometer and friendly disposition, Wynsor Kawamoto battles daily to save lives in California.

On a recent mission to the front lines, Kawamoto probed, poked, measured, got down on his knees and generally stuck his nose in every corner of several Westside restaurants.

As a Los Angeles County environmental health officer, Kawamoto is one of thousands of inspectors statewide who attempt to enforce the myriad and often complex health, building and safety laws.

In most cases, the method of enforcement is to simply persuade restaurant, grocery and apartment operators to comply voluntarily--without lawsuits, fines or administrative actions.

It is a system of regulation that grants inspectors free access to these businesses and provides a generally high degree of cooperation.

That system could be radically changed under the terms of Proposition 95, the Hungry and Homelessness Funding Initiative.

Proposition 95 would slap new fines of up to $250 per day per violation of the health, safety and building codes. It would seek to raise $50 million to $90 million annually that would be funneled into food, shelter and job training programs for the homeless.

Proponents of the measure, including some city and county prosecutors, say it is necessary to put teeth into what they consider lax enforcement of the codes. Now, there are no automatic fines. Fewer than 1% of the violations statewide are ever prosecuted, and most violators are simply told to correct the problem.

Ultimate Weapons

While inspectors have a few ultimate weapons--such as closure of an establishment or the destruction of contaminated foods--they are used only in life-threatening circumstances.

Opponents of Proposition 95 say its automatic fines will destroy the cooperation between inspectors and business operators and create an adversarial relationship that could result in the inspectors being denied access without search warrants.

Kawamoto’s rounds one day this week offered some insight into both sides of the issue.

Upon entering Ciro’s Pomodoro, one of those chichi Italian eateries with a kitchen open to the dining area, Kawamoto immediately scanned the dining room.

“I like to get a quick look around,” Kawamoto later explained. “Sometimes, once I’m in, they start jumping around and put on hats.” But in this case, “right off, I could see that food handlers were not wearing hair restraints.”

Perhaps not real serious, but a violation nonetheless.

Upon introducing himself to the manager and requesting permission to enter the establishment, Kawamoto first checks out the trash area. “Looks good.”

He sticks his pen under the back door. “A rat can squeeze itself down to about one-quarter of an inch,” Kawamoto explained. The door passes the pen test.

On to the restroom. “Where’s the sign? There’s no hand-washing sign,” he said about the reminder to employees to wash their hands.

He turns on the water. “I can tell 120 degrees by feel now,” said Kawamoto, 36, with 2 1/2 years of experience as a county health inspector.

He moves to the kitchen, looking for greasy smudge marks along the walls--a sign of rodents. Then he looks for caked-on dirt and examines every food container to judge its temperature, condition and contents.

Lettuce Stored Illegally

He finds lettuce stored in a milk crate--convenient but illegal. “Too many surfaces. You just can’t keep these clean,” Kawamoto said.

All the while, Kawamoto was unattended, free to poke around at will.

In about half an hour he was done and called the manager over to complete the paper work. The manager promised to remedy all problems immediately.

Chances are, they agreed, this inspection would never have transpired under Proposition 95--at least not with the same ease and efficiency.

The list of 13 violations--ranging from a missing soap dispenser to a missing health certificate--could have cost this restaurant from several hundred to several thousand dollars under Proposition 95.

Knowing that he would face such a stiff fine, the owner would likely have denied the inspector access and could have demanded a search warrant.

“It’s a good-will system,” manager Nicholas de Toth said. “These are not malicious omissions. They’re just things that are overlooked. There are so many variables, so many things that can go wrong.”

Much of his job, Kawamoto said, is aimed at educating owners and food handlers about the finer points and interpretations of the code and how to best comply with them.

Effect Feared

Inspectors fear that role will be jeopardized by Proposition 95, which would make them “policemen” handing out tickets.

Kawamoto and other inspectors said that with the automatic fines, business operators may not be responsive to an impromptu, on-the-job education.

Ciro’s, despite the violations, was rated “above average” in its compliance with the health code, Kawamoto said.

But some other newer and smaller establishments need more help in bringing their businesses up to par.

One such restaurant, Food Nest, was next on Kawamoto’s schedule.

The tiny, African cuisine establishment in a mini-mall just south of the Beverly Center on San Vicente Boulevard had been open just two weeks.

Owner May Ndubuisi, an immigrant from Nigeria who has lived in this country 11 years, said she has been working in kitchens for years, catering off and on for about five years, but this is her first restaurant.

An exciting, but scary experience, she acknowledged. And a difficult one.

One of her freezers was not meant for commercial use; a code violation and a potentially dangerous circumstance.

“This is why I wanted to come early,” Kawamoto said.

“You give us a little time, and we bring in another (freezer),” Ndubuisi said. “You know how it is when starting something like this.”

“I’ll work with you, but I don’t want to see you storing food in (the old freezer),” Kawamoto said.

‘Got a Problem Here’

“Oh, boy,” he muttered as he worked his way through the small restaurant that racked up 12 violations. “We’ve got a problem here.”

“I’m new (at this),” Ndubuisi said. “I thought I knew all the rules (from catering for years.) But running a restaurant is different.”

Kawamoto spent more than an hour and a half in Food Nest, even though it was a fraction of the size and complexity of institutions he was able to cover in a third of the time.

Under Proposition 95, he said, “they’ll probably put quotas (for citations) on us so we’ll have to zip in and out.”

Working with newcomers to the business “is a part of the job I really enjoy,” Kawamoto said.

“Many of these people come from other countries where there is little regulation, if any. On my first visits, I spend a lot of time teaching, and they are pretty receptive. . . . Under Proposition 95, that education is going to cost them. So I don’t know how well it will go over.”

Proponents of the proposition say there is no reason education should suffer under terms of the ballot measure. “We want real enforcement, not unreasonable enforcement,” said Conway Collis, a member of the State Board of Equalization and proponent of the Proposition 95.

For first-time offenders possibly ignorant of the law, a fix-it ticket similar to warnings handed out by traffic cops could be used by health inspectors, Collis said.

Repeat Offenders

But for repeat offenders, a fine might be the best way to gain enforcement, he said.

That point was confirmed at Kawamoto’s next stop.

The restaurant Ma Be was just a few blocks away but a world apart from Food Nest.

Ma Be is where dinner for two, food only, will run from $42 to $72. Chef Claude Segal previously ran the kitchens at Bistango and Ma Maison, among other prominent restaurants here and abroad.

Within minutes of entering the kitchen, Kawamoto was ordering about 120 pounds of sauce stock to be destroyed.

The veal stock, it was discovered, was stored in 3-foot deep pots that make it impossible for material in the center to cool quickly enough, Kawamoto explained.

The restaurant had been warned about the same practice in an inspection two weeks earlier.

Segal, like most of the restaurant cooks and owners interviewed, was not aware of Proposition 95.

But Segal’s reaction to hearing how the measure would work was not typical of those in his business. He said he believed it would be a good thing for restaurants “in the long run.”

“We have to use what we have,” Segal said. “We have to be aware of the law, but we also have to run a business.” In a kitchen, many things are done for convenience of the moment, he said. The threat of a fine of several hundred or thousand dollars could dissuade a cook from taking the easy way out, he said.

“It would push us to do what is right.”