01.29.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:59 pm by Administrator
According to ABC, the gubenatorial race in Illinois between Dan Hynes and Pat Quinn have uncovered new documentation and information on the Burr Oak Cemetery Scandal.
According to the news article, Dan Hynes office of the comptroller was notified in 2003 of the issues at Burr Oak Cemetery regarding the digging up of remains and discarding them into vacant property to make room for other burials, and that his top cemetery official met with him regarding this very incident. This apparently occured on November 19, 2003.
According to a follow up letter from Hynes’ office to cemetery owners the next February, his now director of cemetery care stated, “I am writing in response to our meeting with you in November regarding the discovery of human remains at Burr Oak Cemetery.” The letter written on official comptroller stationary and signed by Percy Lucina, Hynes’ top cemetery aide.
This has become a focal point in the race for governor in the state of Illinois. Governor Quinn blames Hynes for the lack of control over the issue, and Hynes counterclaims that Quinn’s office has spent millions of dollars distorting the facts and blaming him for exploiting the tragedy where he contests his office had no control.
CemOps assertion is; this is so atypical. Fingerpointing with no direction to correct the situation or bring the actual perpetrators to justice. But for this to alledgedly occur for 6 years prior to making the breaking nationwide news is unforgiveable!
Apparently, Governor Quinn blames the comptrollers’ agency for not making the appropriate agencies aware after the letter was published. Making this story even more disgusting, it states there is documentation the cemetery owners were made aware of the problems during the 2003 communications.
CemOps has communicated now for 4 years, this is not out of the ordinary. This isn’t only happening in Illinois, even though Senator Burris was implicated earlier on over the IFDA (Illinois Funeral Directors Association) pre paid funeral trust scam. States just dont’ get it. They have the regulatory control and responsibilities and where withall to levy fines and other punishments for failing to follow state law. Do they? Not until it is too late. CemOps has offered help in almost all states, with little or no return of the offers. States don’t realize instead of complaining about budgets and inability to finance audit and regulatory agencies, these agencies don’t need to feed off the general fund of the individual states. They can easily be self supporting and we can show them how.
Instead of becoming political fodder in a nasty race, the eyes need to be on the ball of the affected families and the continued grief they all suffer every time they read these type headlines. It is evident that all parties have dropped the ball on this case, including ownership of the cemetery, but this is not the first time this has happened. There was the Troy, Georgia crematory case and the Mennorah Gardens case before this, which by the way was quite similar in nature. And hundreds of other cases that only made regional news.
In the past year, CemOps has monitored over 300 cases where the states could have/should have stepped in to protect their constituents. They failed at every turn. We suggest instead of tunnel vision on hiring accountants for this function, look at qualified operations persons with real time experience in the death care industry to look into these matters. Same goes for the federal government. The GAO is no better equipped to investigate these type occurences, but the governmental bodies refuse to move in a different direction.
Simply put, CemOps is sick and tired of these news items making it to a national audience with little or no viable solutions coming forth. Along the way the profession also sits quietly by waiting for the outcome instead of being proactive to insure these type occurences stop. If the government threatens further regulations, the associations fight it, instead of finding ways to police within their own industry and correct before these items hit national news.
The forgotten facts here, are so easy to see if there is a willingness to….. Families are negatively impacted every time they read a story like this. It causes them pause, wondering if where they chose to associate themselves are any better. The state, federal and local government agencies basically do nothing until it blows up in the news, and the death care industry follows suit when of all people they could internally police themselves.
It’s time for everyone to wake up. This is the type thing that drives our revenues down. Our reputation takes more hits every day without a word from the industry that continues to be negatively impacted. The g0vernment continues to lose the trust of the people they are payed to protect.
We don’t have all the answers, but we do have many. Let’s get our heads together and slow this down to a manageable flow until we can get full control over the poor operators that are destroying our profession. If you challenge me on this, I will be glad to send you the hundreds of emails I receive annually regarding this very type occurence. Heads out of the sand! Send me your email address and I will send them to you. Then, maybe you will see how deeply this goes.
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01.25.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:05 pm by Administrator
Having been assigned to troubled locations for a number of years now, and the impact the solutions to those locations had on my personal life experience – I thought it only prudent to share some of these with the readers of this blog.
During the remediation of a cemetery for one of the large corporations, the lack of appropriate Personal Protective Equipment became a serious cause of illness for me. During a disinterment in a cemetery with a considerable amount of limestone and under ground water, in order to communicate with a grounds member I lifted my paper mask. At that very moment, a splash of water was caused by a large rock falling into the grave and splashback of material into my mouth. One year later, I was diagnosed with cancer and the biopsy returned with trace amounts of arsenic and fremaldehyde in the tissue taken. Thus the reason we offer Personal Protective Equipment on our website and we no longer perform such operations without it.
At this point I certainly could have come back on the company, but chose not to. I personally despise those who think the answers to their lives are in the courts with huge settlements, and stayed true to myself and allowed the health insurance to take care of the disease.
At the next large corporation, my reputation was intact for fixing troubled cemetery and crematory locations. During the hiring process, I was interested in clear understandings regarding the identification and solution phases of repairing what was known to be a troubled location. The Chief Operating Officer made it abundantly clear that I was expected to clean up the situation and eliminate all liability from the company for the future. Once it was apparent this could cost the company money in order to correct, the budget was killed and the issues remained.
At the end of this cycle, I had two single spaced pages of unrectified issues the company had no desire to correct. I kept a personal copy of these issues in case it came back to me, and the state ever required an investigation. End result, neither occured.
It was at this time, I realized there was a need for a CemOps. It was at this time, I discovered if the companies didn’t care and the state regulators didn’t care, there was a clear disconnect in what the law stated it required. It was then I realized expectations and enforcement were far apart.
So these issues continue and parties are not brought to accountability until enough families complain or a news agency gets involved.
Those same companies do not respond to efforts to assist with what we know to be problems we can solve. Those same companies have chosen to continue business as usual and not allow outside involvement and help. We continue to offer, with no return to those we know are in desparate need of our assistance.
I can also say to you I have worked for smaller organizations/corporations who have taken these same issues seriously and dedicated the necessary resources to correct issues and insure future occurences do not occur.
Help is here and available to those who wish to take advantage of it.
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01.13.10
Posted in cemetery awareness, cemetery litigation, cemetery news at 7:03 pm by Administrator
Latest in the string of negative media accounts, is the scandal out of Chicago at Burr Oak Cemetery. We have read 29 separate media accounts on this one cemetery scandal, being reported locally-regionally, and now nationwide. Every news organization is covering it now, and the owners of Perpetua are missing in action.
Where it may be a wise choice to distance themselves, in their opinion-the news agencies and sheriff department are pulverizing them at every turn. Most recently, a sheriff department audit reveals there are possibly 9,000 more bodies buried in this cemetery than it can accomodate at full capacity. Perpetua has done nothing to publicly combat this, and the idea of there being that many beyond capacity just doesn’t add up. Recent statements in those same media articles relate burials are taking place without event, and no new disturbances of old graves are taking place.
If you consider both these completely contradictory items being stated in the same article, you would think a spokesperson from Perpetua or their legal firm would be taking the opportunity to speak out. To date, nothing. All that is coming out about this company is they have filed for bankruptcy protection. No damage control will be disastrous for this company. People have no choice but to believe what they read, because nobody else is giving them any information to the contrary.
The other concern with this and a number of other issues in the cemetery, funeral and crematory industries is who is watching over these locations? How could this have gone on without notice, if anyone was ever showing up from the headquarters? What about the previous owners? If there is truly thousands of burials more than the cemetery can hold, why isn’t there any mention of previous owners and their possible roles? Calculating 9,000 burials overage, if the cemetery is performing 350 burials annually would mean this has been ongoing for over two decades. If the news stories are anywhere close to true, and the sheriff has truly audited the location properly-how could this go on for over two decades without being caught? Baffling, isn’t it?
CemOps has long offered to be the eyes and ears of ownership. To be the ones that go into locations and discover improper operating issues for the owners and report back so things can be corrected and kept in house. To be the ones that assist owners of any size in discovering weaknesses and building on principles to turn them into strengths.
Cemetery, crematory and funeral companies spend tens of millions every year on legal fees to defend themselves in court, pay for their legal departments, and/or develop policies and procedures that are obviously not being followed consistently globally. We have offered as a professional aid to help with the front end of this and save these companies countless millions by identifying issues for correction long before they become of interest to the media. Self regulation if you will.
We have seen the fiscal destruction of businesses and family/community trust when nobody is apparently watching. Companies buy out cemeteries from each other, keep the existing employees with little of no further reference or background checks. A few visits take place in the beginning (sometimes) then these locations go on the clock. If there are employees kept who are not upright (re: Burr Oak), the new owner gets the surprise of their lives when the lawsuits and media accounts hit. A little due diligence, another offering of CemOps, and followup will route out most of these type concerns long before reason for news or court coverage. There is your value, if you are willing to take advantage of it.
Finally, how can anyone believe in the case of Burr Oak, a sheriff has the necessary tools and skill sets to audit a cemetery? No offense intended, but a complete forensic inspection is in order now that these numbers have been reported, as it is highly unlikely this sheriff knows how to differenciate the different type burials, which could affect numbers and space or acreage/availability or recognition of poor records keeping/fraud on the part of the four indicted in this story. It takes industry knowledge to get to the bottom of this, and industry savvy of having learned discovery in difficult circumstances and record keeping practices of both healthy and unhealthy operations.
CemOps is still here. Still watching. Still waiting for the industry to understand the value that is CemOps. Our fees represent a small fraction of the costs associated with these claims. Our fees discover these issues before anyone else so they can be corrected and the families are no longer negatively impacted. Beyond the legal fees and destruction of reputation, the entire industry suffers at the hands of such items.
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01.06.10
Posted in cemetery consultant, cemetery consulting, cemetery management at 8:09 pm by Administrator
CemOps, as it states in our about us page, is a group of professionals in the industry who are actively involved in making the industry a better, stronger, more trusted group.
Founder, Bob Roberts-who could be considered the junior member of the group in terms of years, developed CemOps while recuperating from cancer treatments in 2005. After having fixed a multitude of problems in cemeteries and crematories for owners including the large corporations. Bob is not known in all circles, having been the manager on the ground to fix or remediate issues locally or regionally. He never sought out or obtained nationwide status while with the corporations, feeling his best place was moving from cemetery to cemetery and fixing the problems and training employees on best practices. Those who know him will tell you he is the go to guy when you have problems, and that he has never caused media or legal attention to become trouble for owners. In fact, his calm means of operations and compliance have never garnered a single news item or legal event. Further, he has saved companies millions by insuring families were well served, properly treated, problems addressed and corrected, preventing the need for any legal or media involvement. He believed this same knowledge and experience should be utilized by all operations throughout the country. Bob has 15 years total in the death care industry, spanning from funeral service as a growing young man, to cemeteries and crematories later in life. A businessman in other industries and former professional golfer, Bob has chosen to dedicate his working life to this end. It takes a passion, and a calling to be successful in this profession and it matters less to Bob how many years you have in the business but more importantly what you have done with that time, and lessons and talent obtained. Having developed CemOps, Bob communicated with his former Regional VP at a corporation about his website and ideas. Bruce Seagrave then became interested and integrated into the fold. With the idea of being able to help any and all funeral, cemetery, and crematory businesses become stronger and more compliant-and more profitable by doing things right the first time, instead of trying to do them over after mistakes are found, Bruce considered his involvement a natural fit. Bruce brings 36 years industry experience to CemOps and is a respected member of the professional community. Not only has he spent that amount of time in the profession, he has achieved many good things for those companies and families he has served. For those interested in time in service, Bruce offers that and much, much more.
There will be further announcements as to those involved with CemOps, bringing total experience levels to over 100 years. Most important is the combined desire to assist owners and regional managers in becoming more proficient and aware of their areas of responsibilities compliance with company requirements and applicable laws governing their respective business locations.
Watch our website and blog for further announcements regarding the growing group which comprises CemOps. And look for exciting upcoming information for 2010.
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01.01.10
Posted in cemetery awareness, cemetery law, cemetery litigation, cemetery management, cemetery news at 11:12 am by Administrator
Another Avoidable Lawsuit
February 15, 2009 on 12:53 am In Sound Off No Comments
Reported in November, in California. $420,000.00 in awards is upheld by the California Court of Appeals, from a lawsuit again dealing with the proper way to deal with a family when a cemetery resold two graves. The cemetery staff involved, kept the resale secret from the original purchasers. In 1986, this family purchased two grave spaces, when records were kept manually. When the cemetery converted to a computerized system in 2000, the error was discovered. Error #1. Instead of notifying the purchasers of the mistake, the cemetery staff chose to not resolve the situation because additional spaces were not available at the time. When plaintiff’s husband passed away in 2005, the cemetery provided two spaces elsewhere with the assurance that a nearby roadway would not be extended. Some time later the road was extended, which becomes error #2.
The courts determined the liability existed, when it has ratified “an intent to adopt or approve oppresive, fraudulent, or malicious behavior by an employee in performance of their duties.” The employer was found to be guilty of this, and the actions of the employee were found to be the liability of the employer, due to employers knowledge of this event.
The base issue here is simple. Telling the truth at the time of discovery would have precluded this size of judgement, if not completely eliminating the lawsuit altogether. Telling lies, or lying by ommission, is exactly what caused this lawsuit and subsequent award.
When will those in this profession learn, that covering up this type item will only come back to haunt? When will this industry start using the expertise of companies like CemOps to train their employees on the proper handling of such situations? Clearly, many employers in this profession don’t take this seriously until they have lost a lawsuit, but training still doesn’t take place on any consistent basis.
Was this employee involved terminated? Were the rest of the employees at this location trained on the proper methods of dealing with such and other issues, to preclude further occurence? Or, were the employees simply expected to learn from this mistake with no follow–up?
Clearly there is a value to outside involvement in investigative, auditory, or training assistance to strengthen weak areas in our operations environments. This one is definitely unnecesssary. So are so many that we read about every day in the media. Once again, CemOps and other companies like it are out there to help. The lawsuits can slow or stop, with the proper training and policies/procedures in place. Or——–just keep going to court and paying the costs in high jury awards and the negative publicity that comes with it, which also has a negative impact in the communities affected.
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