For decades, Wisconsin residents have been able at the same time to buy a cemetery plot and to arrange a funeral— but not at the same place.
That could change if a bill recently introduced by Rep. Evan Wynn (R-43rd District) ends the current prohibition mandating that owners of funeral homes not own cemeteries and vice versa.
Cemetery ownership organizations have come out in favor of the proposed legislation. Funeral home owners’ associations are lobbying against it. A hearing was scheduled on the measure on Feb. 28, the day after The Chronicle went to press.
Might this measure, 2011 Assembly Bill 523, affect Wisconsin’s Jewish community? Views appear to differ widely.
Michael Blumenfeld, executive director of the Wisconsin Jewish Conference, said his organization has not engaged in any lobbying activities on this bill.
“We don’t have a position on it because we don’t think it really impacts us,” he said.
Attorney Michael Schumann specializes in cemetery law and has served for 35 years as the executive director of Spring Hill Cemetery (owned by B’nai B’rith). He said passage of the bill would not change the status quo there.
“I see it as much more important to the general community than it would be to the Jewish community,” he said.
For starters, he said, there is that there is already enough cemetery land in the Greater Milwaukee area to accommodate the needs of the Jewish community for years to come.
He also said a high level of collegiality exists between Milwaukee’s Jewish cemetery officials and funeral directors.
“We all work together because we have a sacred trust toward discharging to the deceased and families of the Jewish community,” he said, “and anything that makes that easier is a good thing. The funeral homes we work with are really outstanding and professional. The family has to be served and that’s the first call. Anything else that pops up, we work it out.”
Bad for consumers?
In contrast, Blane Goodman, owner of Blane Goodman Funeral Service LLC, said an effort to repeal the law in the 1990s was unsuccessful, and that passage would not be good for consumers on several fronts.
Funeral homes, he said, are subject to more stringent restrictions on advertising and how they handle funds for pre-need purchases.
Funeral homes are required to place 100 percent of all pre-need funds in trust; cemeteries are required to place 40 percent of those funds. Both Goodman and Tom Andrus, a funeral director atGoodman-Bensman Whitefish Bay Funeral Home and the Jewish Community Funeral Home, expressed concern that this could change under AB 523.
Andrus was emphatic about his objection to the proposed legislation. He said that large out-of-state corporations that own cemeteries here want to be able to put funeral homes on their properties.
“What’s happened in other states where they’ve repealed this is that they’ve knocked the locally-owned funeral homes out of business and reduced the choices for the consumer,” he said.
Elana Kahn-Oren, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, said: “It’s important that Jewish community members, like all members of our community, are protected when they are in a state of grief. As legislators consider repealing this law, they need to be mindful of what will serve the best interests of consumers and protect them from exploitation at a moment of extreme vulnerability.”
Rabbi Melech Lensky, executive director of Beth Hamedrosh Hagodel Cemetery, was unaware of the bill until contacted by The Chronicle. He described the bill as “interesting,” but had no other comment.
In Illinois, joint funeral home and cemetery ownership is legal. David Jacobson, owner of Chicago Jewish Funeral Homes, told The Chronicle that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea.
Jacobson, a second-generation funeral director, grew up in New York State, which, like Wisconsin, prohibits co-ownership. But his family later owned a funeral home in Florida, which allows it.
Co-ownership, he said, was a direct contributor to one of the worst scandals in Florida funeral history. Menorah Gardens in Broward and Palm Beach Counties operated funeral homes and are owned by Service Corporation International (which also owns 16 funeral homes in Wisconsin).
The company settled a class-action lawsuit in 2003 for $100 million after employees were accused of routinely burying people in the wrong places, breaking open vaults to create burial space, and removing bodies from broken vaults and tossing them into a wooded area. (See Palm Beach Post article, April 28, 2009, by Eliot Kleinberg, available online.)
“We thought about buying [cemeteries] in Chicago, but there are no checks and balances,” he said. “There has to be some advocacy for the family. If you go to a funeral home and they control everything, I just don’t see it as good.”
Jacobson speculated that large, publicly held corporations were behind Wynn’s decision to introduce the bill.
Asked whether that was the case, Wynn said cemetery owners had approached him with a request to consider changing the current law, and he afterward spoke to funeral directors.
“I’m a free market person,” he said. “I believe in competition, so I see this as an issue of competition. Just because we’ve had this law for 100 years doesn’t mean we should keep it.”
He also said that current laws applying to cemeteries and funeral homes would remain in place, including trust account amounts and property tax exemptions.
Cemetery land is tax-exempt; funeral homes pay property taxes. If a cemetery built a funeral home on its property, the land on which it sat would be subject to property tax.
Additionally, the amounts required to be placed in trust – 40 percent for cemetery plots and 100 percent for funeral services — would not change, said Wynn.
According to the Department of Administration, passage of the law would add $39,700 in annualized costs, in the form of a part-time clerical worker. Wynn said that, if passed, the work generated as a result of the new law would likely be spread out among existing employees.
Amy Waldman is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and coordinator of the ACCESS Program for Displaced Homemakers at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
Loading ...