Post inspections on Internet

Deseret Morning News graphic   Salt Lake County eatery inspections(1.4 MB .pdf file)

Deseret Morning News graphic   Utah County eatery inspections(600 KB .pdf file)

Let's say you want to take visitors out for a nice meal, and you'd like to get an idea which restaurants in your area have the cleanest kitchens.

In Utah, you'd better have a lot of lead time.

First, you would need to file a formal request with the county health department, citing the state's open-records law. If you live in Utah County, you would need to pay the county $50 per hour to do the research.

But if you lived in King County, Washington, instead, you could do a few mouse clicks on your computer and get all the information you need. The same is true in many other counties nationwide. If you lived in Denmark, you would need only look in the window of the restaurant. There you would see variations of the familiar smiley face people often use in computer communications. A broad smile means the restaurant has a clean record. A frown means it's a step away from being shut down.

So, why is it so difficult to get information here?

Utah health officials and restaurant owners alike parrot worn-out worries about the public misinterpreting results if they were readily available. Perhaps this means inspectors need to come up with reports that are easier to interpret, or perhaps it means they need to put more trust in the public, whose interests they serve.

We're happy to see that the old arguments for secrecy are beginning to fade in Utah. Davis County soon will be posting all types of inspections, including restaurants, on the Internet. Salt Lake County is beginning to discuss how it could do so, as well.

This newspaper recently completed a thorough review of 5,000 restaurant inspections in Salt Lake and Utah counties, posting scores on deseretnews.com. If nothing else, this shows the futility of trying to control information in the Information Age. If it's public, the public will find ways to get it.

In the United States, the presumption should always be that government records are open unless a compelling reason exists to do otherwise. And if they are open, they should be easily accessible. Certainly, matters of public health deserve the full light of day. It's hardly fair for the establishments with perfect records to remain hidden along with the ones who don't take cleanliness seriously. Not only does this make things harder for the discriminating public, it removes an incentive for eateries to do their best.