It’s an A-bomination!
Most restaurants haven’t improved since the city instituted its letter-grade inspection system — a sham that has fattened City Hall coffers but hasn’t produced the public-health improvements touted by the city, a City Council analyst charged.
“We have a government agency that’s willing to blatantly lie to the public,” Artyom Matusov told The Post. “If we can’t trust the Health Department to provide real scientific data . . . then we can’t trust any agency.”
Matusov said some sanitary conditions at city restaurants have gotten worse, not better, since the new system began in 2010.
Performance in six violation categories — flies, food not hot or cold enough, unsanitary equipment, improper food storage and improper food protection surfaces — has plummeted, he found.
And food-poisoning complaints to the 311 hot line for restaurants, bars and delis surged from 2,066 in 2009 to 2,305 in 2013.
“They are intentionally misleading the public about the success of the program,” said Matusov, 29, a Harvard University Kennedy School of Government grad.
The city trumpeted data that showed more restaurants got an A grade on their initial inspection since the start of the program.
But that method overrepresents the number of A grades, since A’s will “stick around longer” — up to a year before another inspection.
“The city’s restaurant grading system is completely arbitrary . . . and most restaurants aren’t doing well on the test, which itself is convoluted and impossible to figure out,” Matusov said.
Working for the council’s Governmental Operations Committee, Matusov looked at how each restaurant performed during the initial inspection cycle to see if the new system was having an effect.
He found stagnation — about 30 percent of restaurants got A’s before and after the new system started.
“[The DOH] was saying to us that what we’re seeing is clear progress . . . There’s actually no improvement since before letter grading. It’s flat,” he noted.
He also looked at how restaurants performed on three successive inspections between July 2010 to December 2012.
He found that nearly 80 percent of restaurants showed little improvement — receiving either no A or only one A in the trio of tests. Sixteen percent of the 17,597 sites with B or C grades never improved.
Matusov presented his report to DOH analysts in March 2013, and two months later, to then-Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson and former Health Commissioner Thomas Farley.
“My goal . . . was to basically confront them with the fact that they were putting out bad data to the public, and to make them feel professionally ashamed about doing so in the future.”
But he said he got lip service from the agency, and was eventually ignored.
Restaurant fines hovered below $30 million a year the three years before the letter grades. In the three years under the new system, fine revenues averaged $45 million a year, data show.
Restaurateurs are confounded by the current system — and not surprised by Matusov’s findings.
“There’s been no improvement to overall health of New York City restaurants. It’s just a runaround game — we’re just trying to plug holes,” said Josh Grinker, chef at Brooklyn’s Stone Park restaurant.
Grinker said there’s no telling which violations, some having nothing to do with food, an inspector will target — for example, the construction of a non-food-contact surface.
“There’s something wrong with a department that’s supposed to be protecting the health of its citizens that isn’t looking at . . . factors that actually might have an impact on people’s health,” he said.
In March, the city tweaked its inspection system, making it less punitive by making a shift toward educating business owners first before fining them.
The DOH refused to answer any questions. The City Council, through spokesman Eric Koch, said that it “continues to monitor the restaurant grading system to ensure that it is effective in keeping restaurants safe for the public and that it is fairly administered.”
But fundamental problems linger, Matusov said.
“The flaws remain because inspections are still arbitrary, confusing and therefore mostly just punitive,” he said. “[The] DOH is still lying to the public and not addressing the fundamental issues, and there is still no visible evidence that sanitary conditions have improved.”