Public Records and Open Meeting Violations
The business of this Board is conducted almost entirely in secret.
They now deny access to these public records:
- Meeting Agendas
- Meeting Minutes
- Inspection Reports (or even the blank form)
- List of Disciplinary Cases referred for prosecution
- Disciplinary Charges (Order to Show Cause)
- Disciplinary Final Decisions
- Disciplinary Consent Agreements or Negotiated Settlements
Pre-need Annual Reports from funeral homes are available but at an
unaffordable price.
Funeral
Monitor story by permission.
The
actual response letter
The
Report form
Large portions of Board meetings are in closed Executive Sessions in
which the Board hears the accusations and makes its first level
decision, whether to prosecute, in disciplinary cases. This same
Board later decides guilt and sanctions. But the
Executive Sessions are held under the exemption "To discuss strategy
with respect to . . . litigation," not under the exemption "To consider
the discipline of. . . an
individual . . ." Only under the latter exemption must the
accused be notified and given the opportunity to attend, and he even
has the right to require that the meeting be open. Using the
litigation strategy exemption denies the accused due process by
allowing the Board (which will decide the case) to hear the accusations
in secret.
Minutes of a meeting
with executive sessions (when Minutes were still available)
What to do?
Massachusetts should abolish the Board. Its secrecy, its failure
to enforce consumer protections, and its blocking of innovation in
funeral service are ample reasons for abolition. The Board’s
thinking remains where it started, a century ago, that embalming is the
key element of funeral service and that funerals should be the way they
used to be. Funeral homes must have elaborate embalming rooms of
specific dimensions, and chapels of so many square feet. But they
don’t have to have refrigeration. Times have changed. Many people
now choose direct cremation with later memorial service and so need
neither an embalming room nor a chapel. Requiring those
facilities needlessly raises the cost, as does requiring all funeral
directors to be qualified embalmers.
Colorado abolished its Funeral Board a decade ago, but business goes on
with no more abuses than before. Full service funeral homes
continue to co-exist with others offering minimal facilities and
service at a lower cost because of lesser overhead. Massachusetts
should follow Colorado’s lead and abolish the Board of Registration.
