Bill Supported By Bucks County Lawmaker Could Cause Cost Of Burials To Increase

By Eric Boehm | PA Independent

The cost of living is always going up, but it’s the cost of dying that no one seems to talk about.

Ask Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a Vermont-based organization that favors a more open market for funeral providers and their recently deceased customers.

Slocum can tell you that the high cost of dying is largely the result of a three-headed system – of state lawmakers, licensing boards and the professional funeral home industry – working as one to limit competition and maintain high prices for the dead and their grieving loved ones.

“It is literally a segment of industry using the government to give themselves a legal, statutorial right to force consumers to pay higher prices,” Slocum told Watchdog this week. “And they’re doing it in a way that most people don’t notice.”

To see the process in action, look at what happened late last year in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where this anti-competitive Cerberus takes human form, at times, in the shape of state Sen. Robert “Tommy” Tomlinson.

Tomlinson, a Republican who covers portions of the Levittown area, is the fifth-term senator who chairs the state Senate’s Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure Committee, which oversees, among other things, changes to laws affecting licensed funeral directors. From that position, Tomlinson plays a key role in determining which bills have a chance of becoming law and which will never see the fluorescent light of a committee hearing room.

Back home in his district, Tomlinson is a licensed funeral director and owner of the Tomlinson Funeral Home in Bensalem, which has been in his family since 1945.

In October, Tomlinson’s committee approved legislation requiring cemeteries to comply with a 1982 Federal Trade Commission rule regarding the sale of so-called “pre-need” burial plots. A minor rewrite to a technical and complicated licensing bill, it’s not exactly the type of thing that catches the media’s eye.

But the committee approval was the latest round in an ongoing turf war between funeral homes and cemeteries. Whoever wins, consumers — in this case anyone who plans on living and dying in Pennsylvania — lose.

Those pre-need burial arrangements are big business. Funeral homes are required by state law to keep 100 percent of the purchase in escrow until the plot is actually used – when the purchaser dies. Cemeteries are allowed, in certain circumstances and depending on the details of the purchase, to skim 30 percent of the purchase price and keep only 70 percent in escrow.

The bill in question would change the rules for cemeteries, forcing them to also keep the full cost of the purchase in escrow until the plot is used.

Tomlinson was not the sponsor of the bill, but in committee hearings he spoke of the need to level the playing field between funeral homes and cemeteries, arguing that the legislation was in consumers’ best interest.

But the process matters, too. Because the state is forcing cemeteries to comply with a 30-year-old rule, it’s worth considering if that’s really necessary. The FTC says it’s not.

In a review of the legislation, the FTC concluded the bill could “lessen competition, resulting in potentially higher prices and fewer options for consumers, without countervailing benefits to consumers.”

The feds also reported a complete lack of consumer complaints about the current system.

What it would do is strike a blow against many cemeteries’ business model. Because cemeteries and funeral homes are in direct competition when it comes to selling pre-need burials, a loss for the cemeteries is a win for the funeral homes – and by extension a win for Tomlinson’s business.

Guy Saxton, a past president of the Pennsylvania Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association says the current law has worked well for decades, and he worries that many small cemeteries in the state would be “collateral damage” in a conflict between the funeral homes and StoneMor, which recently signed an agreement to manage the massive cemeteries in the Catholic Church’s Philadelphia Archdiocese.

“Here is a senator who has a direct involvement in the passage of legislation that will personally affect his business’ bottom line,” said Leo Knepper, executive director of the Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, a conservative campaign group, told Watchdog. “How can we expect him to have any neutrality? He’s obviously looking out for his own best interests, rather than for consumers.”

Knepper says the legislation is an example of crony capitalism. He wants the state Senate to answer ethical questions about Tomlinson’s votes in favor of the bill.

Though CAP has made a name for itself in Pennsylvania by successfully backing conservative primary challengers against incumbent Republicans, the group is not supporting any candidate in Tomlinson’s district and the senator’s term does not expire until the 2018 election cycle.

Tomlinson did not return calls for comment, but he has been an unabashed supporter of the bill. After it passed the state Senate, he even sat in on House Consumer Affairs Committee hearing to voice his support – and used the opportunity to push back against witnesses who opposed the legislation, according to transcripts.

It’s Not Just Pennsylvania

Anti-competitive regulations within the funeral home industry have been on the policy radar since Jessica Mitford wrote The American Way of Death in 1963. But almost half a century later, such rules remain common in many states — and are getting worse in some.

Alabama, for example, recently passed legislation requiring a licensed funeral director to be present at any burial, funeral or memorial service.

In Alabama, grieving requires the talents of a state-approved funeral director.

Slocum calls the Alabama law the most egregious example, but many states have laws requiring the use (and therefore the cost) of a licensed funeral director for a wide range of activities that could probably be done just as well without one.

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie last year signed a bill to make it illegal for religious organizations to sell headstones after the Archdiocese of Newark began selling them, cutting into what had been the exclusive domain of funeral homes.

In Louisiana, the state Board of Funeral Directors recently stopped a group of monks from selling plain wooden caskets. Under state law, only licensed funeral directors are allowed to sell coffins, they argued in court.

Occupational licensing is a threat to free markets in many professions, but it’s particularly problematic within the death industry. People don’t want to think about death, in general, and grieving families are unlikely to stop and wonder why they are paying exorbitant prices for headstones, coffins or burial plots.

“The reality is this stuff goes on and businesses use the government at the expense of the average consumer,” Slocum said.

By the way, that law in Alabama started off as a bill introduced by state Rep. K. L. Brown.  It’s probably no surprise to learn that he, too, is a licensed funeral director and owner of the K.L. Brown Funeral Home in Jacksonville, Alabama.