Wachs Urges County to Toughen Eatery Checks

Dismayed by television reports of unsanitary practices in area restaurants, Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs urged his colleagues Friday to ask the county to toughen its health regulations and crack down more swiftly on violators.

“You’ve got to be sure that the moment the cameras go away, you don’t go back to business as usual,” said Wachs, who introduced a motion urging the county to demand better training for restaurant employees and to give more power to its own health inspectors. “I just don’t want the system go to back to the way it’s been.”

His proposal came on the heels of a hidden-camera investigation by KCBS-TV that showed footage of unclean conditions--from cockroach infestations to rotting food--at local restaurants, including several prominent eateries.

Wachs was also reacting to the daylong county-ordered shutdown Wednesday of one of the San Fernando Valley’s most popular establishments, Jerry’s Famous Deli in Studio City, which sits in Wachs’ council district but which was not featured in the TV investigation.

The councilman said the county has an obligation to respond to the investigation’s findings and that “the pressure will be too great” for it to let the scandal pass. His motion, which will be taken up by the council Tuesday, urges the Board of Supervisors to create a complaint hotline for the public, grant broader powers to inspectors to immediately shut down gross violators and force eateries to post the date of their last health inspection outside the restaurant.

Wachs said the county has actually tried to mandate training for restaurant employees but that the restaurant industry has resisted such requirements.

“Now you see when they’re left to their own devices what the results are,” he said. “Food handlers need some basic training. That is not an unreasonable requirement.”

Since the 1960s, many area cities like Los Angeles have given health inspection duties over to the county, Wachs said. But the councilman said he has sought advice from the city attorney’s office on what powers the city could assume if it believed that the county had not taken adequate steps to ensure that health standards were upheld in dining establishments.