Some supervisors balk at adding functions state can do
By Vicky Wedig
Staff writer
People are getting sick from eating in Walworth County restaurants, and the state is doing nothing about it, county health officials say.
The Walworth County Department of Health and Human Services is proposing taking over the state’s functions of inspecting restaurants, grocery stores, pools and spas and investigating food-borne illnesses. But the proposal is being met with resistance from some County Board members who contend the county’s overall goal is to consolidate services and unload any functions that other entities can provide, not take on new ones.
The county’s Health and Human Services Board considered the matter Dec. 18 and agreed to have a public hearing on the proposal to allow restaurant and hotel owners and consumers to weigh in on the issue. The hearing will be at 1 p.m. March 19 at the Walworth County Government Center, 100 W. Walworth Ave., Elkhorn.
Health department officials say the program would be self-sustaining – license fees collected from business owners would pay the county’s cost of inspections and investigations. However, they said, license fees might have to be increased to cover the costs, and some board members say restaurant owners can’t afford more expenses.
“There are restaurants now that are hanging on by their fingernails. They don’t need any additional costs,” said County Board Supervisor Nancy Russell. “I’m just very, very concerned that this is not our mission.”
Public Health Officer Janice Ellefsen said restaurant owners already pay licensing fees to cover the cost of state inspections and are getting nothing in return. She said any increases in costs would be minimal, and restaurants would get the services they’re already paying for.
Board member Joe Schaefer, who has operated Ye Olde Hotel Bar and Restaurant in the Town of Lyons for 45 years, said he believes the state’s system is doing its job and the county has no need to take over.
“I’m not going to go along with the program because I don’t think it’s broke,” he said.
Schaefer said rural supper clubs and taverns already are having difficulty surviving with dwindling clientele resulting from increasingly stringent drunken driving laws and growing requirements for various licenses.
“Our kind of restaurants are a dying breed,” he said.
He said the program also will affect owners of convenience stores and bed-and-breakfasts and said many different trade groups should have the opportunity to voice their opinions.
“The public hearing’s going to bring a lot of people out,” he said.
Health and Human Services Board member James Seegers, a surgeon, acknowledged that restaurant owners will be passionate about avoiding increased costs and penalties, but he said consumers are likely as fervent about having reasonable assurance that they can eat at area restaurants without risk of illness. He said the county should make as great an effort to notify consumers of the hearing as business owners.
“They’re going to say, ‘I don’t want to get sick,’” he said.
The proposal
The county Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a five-year implementation plan to become an agent for the state agencies that license retail food stores and restaurants.
“We could not jump in to any big project,” said Ellefsen.
Health and Human Services Department Director Linda Seemeyer said her staff would need to write ordinances to govern the programs and come back to the board for budgetary approval.
The plan would begin this year with the county taking over water-testing services and beginning to set up a program to take over the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection’s function of governing retail food establishments such as grocery and convenience stores.
The board approved the water-testing services portion of the program, which the department already is equipped to do, but not the other components.
“I do not approve of the food inspection program,” said board Chairman Jerry Grant.
The water lab portion involves collecting water samples from establishments that have private wells but serve the public. Seemeyer said the county has always collected the samples but has sent them to the state for testing. The county purchased equipment to test the samples itself and will see an 18-month return on its investment, she said.
In 2015, the department would hire an environmental health supervisor and a half-time environmental health specialist, complete the DATCP contract and assume oversight of 160 facilities in the county and begin setting up a program to take over the state Department of Health Services Food Safety and Recreational Licensing contract for restaurant inspections.
In 2016, the county would become a limited agent for the food safety program, and continue to work toward full agent status in 2017. By 2018, the department would assume full agent status for the Food Safety and Recreational Licensing program and hire two more staff – another environmental health specialist and a clerk.
Outbreaks
Health department staff reported that since July 2012, the county has investigated 113 cases of food poisoning, all but one of which were from food eaten or purchased at public places.
Ellefsen said those cases represent about 2 to 5 percent of actual illnesses related to food. She said 90 percent of gastrointestinal outbreaks that stem from restaurants are unreported.
“When we say there was an outbreak, these are confirmed,” she said.
When Walworth County residents report illness to the county Department of Health and Human Services, the department investigates to determine whether the sickness is a confirmed communicable disease and what the source of the illness is, said Seemeyer. Confirming the sickness as a communicable disease requires a specimen from the sick person that can be tested for bacteria, she said. The county interviews people with confirmed communicable diseases and attempts to pinpoint the source of the illness.
“You play detective,” Seemeyer said.
If the sick person reports becoming ill after eating at a restaurant or multiple people get sick after eating food from the same establishment, the matter is turned over to the state at that point, she said.
Under the county health department’s proposal, the investigation would stay with the county to follow up with the restaurant or store.
“We think we could provide better service,” Seemeyer said.
The system
After a change in leadership, the county’s public health staff of the Department of Health and Human Services began talking internally last fall about ways to improve public health services in the county, Seemeyer said. The idea to become an environmental health agent resulted from those discussions, and the staff took its suggestion to administration and then to the HHS Board, she said.
Grant solicited questions from board members about the plan for HHS staff. Staff came back with answers to those questions, which the board reviewed Dec. 18.
“I think you did a great job of answering all these questions, and I think it’s a good program to take a look at,” board member Sandra Wagie-Troemel told HHS staff.
In their responses, staff said food-borne illness is a problem in Walworth County, and the existing system of handling the matter is broken. Staff provided documentation of illness outbreaks over the past 18 months and the state’s handling of the incidents.
Board member William Wucherer asked staff to expand on their claim that “the system is broken and the state is not doing its job.”
Ellefsen said the state admits that it does not have the capacity to cover all of its counties. Walworth County is among 22 counties in the state that don’t run their own environmental health programs.
“The state doesn’t want to do a bad job,” she said. “They just don’t have the capacity to do it.”
She said county public health staff witnessed a state investigator sign off on a pool in Walworth County that was empty.
“You can’t test a pool with no water in it,” she said.
But, the investigator had no plans to come back to Walworth County to check the pool when it was full, she said.
“I’m not allowed to come back. This is all just a check mark on the list of establishments. One visit, check it off, and it’s done,” Ellefsen reported the inspector said.
She said people are spending $300 a night to stay in Walworth County’s resorts and hotels and should be able to feel safe in their pools and whirlpools.
County environmental health specialist Erica Bergstrom said in the most recent food-poisoning outbreak in Walworth County – on Nov. 25, the state didn’t conduct its initial investigation of the facility until 15 days after the county reported the matter.
Comparatively, Washington County, which is an agent for the state and conducts its own investigations, had an outbreak the same day and had fully investigated and closed its case within three days, said public health nurse Megan Dreger.
The state planned to conduct the second inspection of the facility from the Nov. 25 outbreak – a Walworth restaurant and grocery store – the week of Dec. 23, Dreger said. But, she said, second inspections typically don’t occur. She said a state inspector who saw violations at a facility said if they were written up, a return visit would be required.
Ellefsen said part of the reason the most recent outbreak took 15 days to begin investigating is that the state couldn’t decide which agency should handle it because the facility is a combined restaurant and grocery store. The Department of Ag handles grocery stores, and the Department of Health handles restaurants.
Under the county’s proposal, the county Department of Health and Human Services would be a single agency responsible for both types of establishments, she said.
