Online city resaurant grading system progressing in committee: Councilman Brandon Scott

City Councilman Brandon Scott was responsible for introducing legislation in 2012 requiring the Baltimore City Health Department to implement a grading system for restaurant inspections and post those grades in an online database.
Right now, the more than 5,700 food establishments in Baltimore “are inspected on a sliding scale based on level of risk,” reported the Baltimore Sun in October 2012.
While the legislation Scott introduced is “in committee still,” he said, progress has been made.
“The health department, administratively, is already working toward putting the full [restaurant] reports online,” he told Technically Baltimore in an interview this month.
Read Technically Baltimore’s interview with Brandon Scott about open data.
In addition, Scott said, hand-held devices have been purchased for city health department inspectors as part of a $128,000 effort through the Baltimore Innovation Fund to transition the city health department from an “entirely paper-based enterprise to an automated, paperless business process, or web-based quality management system.”
Although, as the Baltimore Sun reported in October 2012, some restaurateurs are wary of a letter-grade restaurant inspection score, fearing that diners will shy away from visiting establishments that might be entirely clean, but have nonetheless received less than an “A” score.
“The majority of restaurants won’t have a problem,” said Scott. “It’s not about trying to penalize anybody, but citizens deserve the right to know the conditions of the place where they eat.”