Cemeteries want to bury WI’s death services law

By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON — It was Benjamin Franklin who coined the sardonic proverb, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

In Wisconsin, you can add to Old Ben’s epigram the subcategory of the seemingly never-ending dispute between funeral homes and cemeteries.

For years, Wisconsin cemetery owners have worked to bury an 80-year-old law that prohibits joint ownership of funeral homes and cemeteries. Last year, a bill that would have removed the restriction, again, died in committee.

Mark Graul, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Organization for Responsible Consumerism, a coalition of cemetery owners formed to repeal the prohibition, asserts there will be a similar bill introduced “probably very soon.”

There is arguably a greater urgency this time around. Service Corporation International, North America’s largest provider of death care products and services, is poised to purchase Stewart Enterprises, which owns five cemeteries in Wisconsin. The acquisition is expected to be completed by early 2014, contingent on the usual regulatory clearances.

SCI would take on the Wisconsin cemeteries at its own peril.

Under existing law, SCI would run afoul of the segregation  law and, unless the law is changed, the death services company would have to divest or shut down its 15 Badger State funeral homes or the cemeteries included in the merger. That would cost Wisconsin jobs, WORC warned.

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