01.29.10

If This Doesn’t Make You Mad, You’re In The Wrong Profession!

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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