The Allegheny County Board of Health received a draft proposal Wednesday for plans to assign area restaurants grades based on their annual inspections and post the results prominently in restaurant windows.

Under the proposal, food inspectors would use a numerical scoring system starting at 100 percent and subtracting points for any food safety violations they uncover. The more serious the violation, the higher the deduction. Repeat violations also would draw higher deductions. Restaurants could score as high as 110 percent by earning extra credit for exceeding standards.

Under the current system, inspectors record violations but do not issue an overall grade or score.

"This puts some objective criteria on what has been more subjective in the past," health department director Bruce Dixon told the board.

Many details under the new program were still being worked out, such as whether restaurant owners who are unhappy with their grades will be required to pay for a reinspection, said Steve Steingart, acting director of the food safety program, who presented the proposal.

It also hasn't been decided whether grades, scores or both would be displayed publicly in restaurant widows, Mr. Steingart said.

"It will be 'something,' for sure," he said.

Food safety advocates say displaying inspection grades or scores is a powerful incentive for restaurants to strictly follow food safety rules and help protect the public from foodborne illnesses.

Mr. Steingart told the board a final proposal for revamping inspections would be ready Jan. 1. But several board members said they wanted the proposal finished by Nov. 1 as previously planned.

"We've been talking about these changes for some time," county manager and health department board member Jim Flynn said.

The subcommittee charged with revising the restaurant inspection program includes several board of health members and food safety administrators, plus five prominent representatives from the local restaurant industry, including Kevin Joyce of the Carlton, Jeff Cohen of Smallman Street Deli and Brooks Broadhurst of Eat'n Park restaurants, Mr Steingart said.

He also told the board that the food safety division was lagging behind on restaurant inspections so far this year.

"We are not where we should be," he said.

Mr. Steingart attributed the backlog to low productivity among some inspectors and high staff turnover that made it difficult to keep a full complement of 17 inspectors in the food division.

It was unclear from his presentation how many inspections were overdue.

The board had asked for an update on the frequency of inspections following a Post-Gazette story in early July that found at least one in four inspections were not being performed on time.

After repeatedly missing its targets, the department in July began posting restaurant inspection reports online for the public to view.

The data, which is limited to a facility's most recent inspection, is available at webapps.achd.net/Restaurant/. Users may search for a particular restaurant or call up a list of food facilities by municipality.

Initially, the data was limited to a summary report, but later the full report was included.

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