SB3280 103RD GENERAL ASSEMBLY

LRB103 38171 RTM 68304 b

103RD GENERAL ASSEMBLY
State of Illinois
2023 and 2024
SB3280

Introduced 2/7/2024, by Sen. Sara Feigenholtz

SYNOPSIS AS INTRODUCED:

225 ILCS 411/5-15

Amends the Cemetery Oversight Act. Provides that the definition of "religious cemetery" includes any cemetery in which at least 70% of annual interments and entombments for each of the preceding 2 calendar years are made in accordance with the temporalities of a single recognized church, religious society, association, or denomination.

A BILL FOR

AN ACT concerning regulation.

Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly:

Section 5. The Cemetery Oversight Act is amended by changing Section 5-15 as follows:

(225 ILCS 411/5-15)

(Section scheduled to be repealed on January 1, 2027)

Sec. 5-15. Definitions. In this Act:

"Address of record" means the designated address recorded by the Department in the applicant's or licensee's application file or license file. The address of record for a cemetery authority shall be the permanent street address of the cemetery.

"Applicant" means a person applying for licensure under this Act as a cemetery authority, cemetery manager, or customer service employee. Any applicant or any person who holds himself or herself out as an applicant is considered a licensee for purposes of enforcement, investigation, hearings, and the Illinois Administrative Procedure Act.

"Burial permit" means a permit provided by a licensed funeral director for the disposition of a dead human body.

"Care" means the maintenance of a cemetery and of the lots, graves, crypts, niches, family mausoleums, memorials, and markers therein, including: (i) the cutting and trimming of lawn, shrubs, and trees at reasonable intervals; (ii) keeping in repair the drains, water lines, roads, buildings, fences, and other structures, in keeping with a well-maintained cemetery as provided for in Section 20-5 of this Act and otherwise as required by rule; (iii) maintenance of machinery, tools, and equipment for such care; (iv) compensation of cemetery workers, any discretionary payment of insurance premiums, and any reasonable payments for workers' pension and other benefits plans; and (v) the payment of expenses necessary for such purposes and for maintaining necessary records of lot ownership, transfers, and burials.

"Cemetery" means any land or structure in this State dedicated to and used, or intended to be used, for the interment, inurnment, or entombment of human remains.

"Cemetery authority" means any individual or legal entity that owns or controls cemetery lands or property.

"Cemetery manager" means an individual directly responsible or holding himself or herself directly responsible for the operation, maintenance, development, or improvement of a cemetery that is licensed under this Act or shall be licensed pursuant to Section 10-39 of this Act, irrespective of whether the individual is paid by the licensed cemetery authority or a third party.

"Cemetery merchandise" means items of personal property normally sold by a cemetery authority not covered under the Illinois Funeral or Burial Funds Act, including, but not limited to: (1) memorials, (2) markers, (3) monuments, (4) foundations and installations, and (5) outer burial containers.

"Cemetery operation" means to engage in any or all of the following, whether on behalf of, or in the absence of, a cemetery authority: (i) the interment, entombment, or inurnment of human remains, (ii) the sale of interment, entombment, or inurnment rights, cemetery merchandise, or cemetery services, (iii) the maintenance of interment rights ownership records, (iv) the maintenance of or reporting of interment, entombment, or inurnment records, (v) the maintenance of cemetery property, (vi) the development or improvement of cemetery grounds, or (vii) the maintenance and execution of business documents, including State and federal government reporting and the payment of taxes, for a cemetery business entity.

"Cemetery Oversight Database" means a database certified by the Department as effective in tracking the interment, entombment, or inurnment of human remains.

"Cemetery services" means those services customarily performed by cemetery personnel in connection with the interment, entombment, or inurnment of a dead human body.

"Certificate of organization" means the document received by a cemetery association from the Secretary of State that indicates that the cemetery association shall be deemed fully organized as a body corporate under the name adopted and in its corporate name may sue and be sued.

"Comptroller" means the Comptroller of the State of Illinois.

"Confidential information" means unique identifiers, including a person's Social Security number, home address, home phone number, personal phone number, personal email address, personal financial information, and any other information protected by law.

"Consumer" means an individual who purchases or who is considering purchasing cemetery, burial, or cremation products or services from a cemetery authority, whether for themselves or for another person.

"Customer service employee" means an individual who has direct contact with consumers to explain cemetery merchandise, services, and interment rights and to execute the sale of those items to consumers, whether at the cemetery or an off-site location, irrespective of whether compensation is paid by the cemetery authority or a third party.

"Department" means the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

"Email address of record" means the designated email address recorded by the Department in the applicant's application file or the licensee's license file as maintained by the Department's licensure maintenance unit.

"Employee" means an individual who works for a cemetery authority where the cemetery authority has the right to control what work is performed and the details of how the work is performed regardless of whether federal or State payroll taxes are withheld.

"Entombment right" means the right to place individual human remains or individual cremated human remains in a specific mausoleum crypt or lawn crypt selected by a consumer for use as a final resting place.

"Family burying ground" means a cemetery in which no lots, crypts, or niches are sold to the public and in which interments, inurnments, and entombments are restricted to the immediate family or a group of individuals related to each other by blood or marriage.

"Full exemption" means an exemption granted to a cemetery authority pursuant to subsection (a) of Section 5-20.

"Funeral director" means a funeral director as defined by the Funeral Directors and Embalmers Licensing Code.

"Grave" means a space of ground in a cemetery used or intended to be used for burial.

"Green burial or cremation disposition" means burial or cremation practices that reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and toxic chemicals ordinarily created in burial or cremation or, in the case of greenhouse gas emissions, mitigate or offset emissions. Such practices include any standards or method for burial or cremation that the Department may name by rule.

"Immediate family" means the designated agent of a person or the persons given priority for the disposition of a person's remains under the Disposition of Remains Act and shall include a person's spouse, parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren and siblings.

"Individual" means a natural person.

"Interment right" means the right to place individual human remains or cremated human remains in a specific underground location selected by a consumer for use as a final resting place.

"Inurnment right" means the right to place individual cremated human remains in a specific niche selected by the consumer for use as a final resting place.

"Lawn crypt" means a permanent underground crypt installed in multiple units for the entombment of human remains.

"Licensee" means a person licensed under this Act as a cemetery authority, cemetery manager, or customer service employee. Anyone who holds himself or herself out as a licensee or who is accused of unlicensed practice is considered a licensee for purposes of enforcement, investigation, hearings, and the Illinois Administrative Procedure Act.

"Mausoleum crypt" means a grouping of spaces constructed of reinforced concrete or similar material constructed or assembled above the ground for entombing remains.

"Niche" means a space in a columbarium or mausoleum used, or intended to be used, for inurnment of cremated human remains.

"Partial exemption" means an exemption granted to a cemetery authority pursuant to subsection (b) of Section 5-20.

"Parcel identification number" means a unique number assigned by the Cemetery Oversight Database to a grave, plot, crypt, or niche that enables the Department to ascertain the precise location of a decedent's remains interred, entombed, or inurned after the effective date of this Act.

"Person" means any individual, firm, partnership, association, corporation, limited liability company, trustee, government or political subdivision, or other entity.

"Public cemetery" means a cemetery owned, operated, controlled, or managed by the federal government, by any state, county, city, village, incorporated town, township, multi-township, public cemetery district, or other municipal corporation, political subdivision, or instrumentality thereof authorized by law to own, operate, or manage a cemetery.

"Religious burying ground" means a cemetery in which no lots, crypts, or niches are sold and in which interments, inurnments, and entombments are restricted to a group of individuals all belonging to a religious order or granted burial rights by special consideration of the religious order.

"Religious cemetery" means a cemetery owned, operated, controlled, and managed by any recognized church, religious society, association, or denomination, or by any cemetery authority or any corporation administering, or through which is administered, the temporalities of any recognized church, religious society, association, or denomination. "Religious cemetery" also includes any cemetery in which at least 70% of annual interments and entombments for each of the preceding 2 calendar years are made in accordance with the temporalities of a single recognized church, religious society, association, or denomination.

"Secretary" means the Secretary of Financial and Professional Regulation or a person authorized by the Secretary to act in the Secretary's stead.

"Term burial" means a right of interment sold to a consumer in which the cemetery authority retains the right to disinter and relocate the remains, subject to the provisions of subsection (d) of Section 35-15 of this Act.

"Trustee" means any person authorized to hold funds under this Act.

"Unique personal identifier" means the parcel identification number in addition to the term of burial in years; the numbered level or depth in the grave, plot, crypt, or niche; and the year of death for human remains interred, entombed, or inurned after the effective date of this Act. The unique personal identifier is assigned by the Cemetery Oversight Database.

(Source: P.A. 102-20, eff. 6-25-21.)