A new bill is looking to deregulate some of the licensing requirements around embalming and transfer oversight of Arizona's funeral-service industry to the state health department.
Since 1945, Arizona funeral homes have been overseen by the Arizona State Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers.
“So, if there is a problem, people can go right to the board and get answers,” said Darren Malone, a funeral director at Red Mountain Funeral Home in Mesa. “We have the board to help us with continuing education, licensing, if we have questions about cremations or family problems.”
Republican state Senator Steve Kaiser believes the board has been falling short of its duties for years.
“They failed multiple auditor general inspections, and they were not responsive to consumer complaints,” said Sen. Kaiser, who represents parts of Maricopa and Pinal counties.
The funeral board oversees about 1,800 licensees associated with the funeral service industry. The board has a small staff to handle operations and paperwork, an investigator who takes the lead on looking into complaints, and a seven-member board appointed by the governor.
The board holds monthly public meetings where members spend the bulk of their time listening to consumer complaints against licensees. Common complaints include families who say their loved ones were improperly embalmed or funeral homes that have released human cremains to the wrong family members.
Last year, the legislature passed a law to terminate the funeral board on March 31, 2023. Sen. Kaiser said there is a provision in state law that gives the board and its employees six months to wind down business. He said the board will be nonexistent, in its current form, by the end of this year.
Kaiser is currently sponsoring a bill, Senate Bill 1210, that will transfer most funeral board duties to the Arizona Department of Health Services.
“I’m kind of worried we are going to get lost with [A]DHS, being one of their 12 things that they do,” said Malone, but Sen. Kaiser said the proposed change is about accountability and more stringent oversight.
“It’s going to be better regulated because [the funeral] industry is the fox watching the hen house, and that’s what the [current funeral] board was,” said Kaiser.
The proposed legislation also eliminates licensing requirements for assistant funeral directors and assistant embalmers, so, if the bill becomes law, certain employees will only have to be supervised by someone who is licensed.
Sen. Kaiser said at a recent stakeholder meeting with the funeral industry they discussed tweaking the bill's language even more around embalming work to "make it say something to the effect of, 'someone enrolled in a school regarding embalming, or on their way to licensure for embalming can embalm under the direct supervision of a licensed embalmer.'"
Malone said he worries that the negative repercussions of a mistake will fall solely on the licensed supervisor.
“If someone who is not licensed does something wrong, they could walk away. And they don’t care, but I am under scrutiny,” said Malone.
“What we are trying to do is get more people in the industry,” said Kaiser.
ABC15 reached out to both ADHS and the State Funeral Board but both declined to do interviews for this story.
