Del. Joanne C. Benson, a Prince George's County Democrat who sponsored the bill to create a task force, said she was motivated to act after watching her sister sell off her Hagerstown funeral home business piece by piece because she could not pass it on to her son, who is not a licensed mortician.
"My sister lost miserably," Benson said. If she had had a corporate license, she could have left it to her son.
Laurie Sheffield-James, the executive director of the state's Board of Morticians, countered that there's no guarantee that funeral prices would drop if more corporations were permitted to own funeral homes.
The market can support only a certain number of funeral home operators, she said, and national corporations could buy up existing businesses if the chains were allowed to operate in the state.
The Rev. Henry Green, the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Annapolis and a consumer member of the morticians board, said the current rules help maintain the highest standards for the funeral industry. "You want to make sure that people who are serious about the profession are getting into it," he said. "This is an important role that these folks play in the community."
The state morticians board also argues that it only has the power to regulate morticians' licenses - so it would have no authority over corporations if they were permitted.
But Benson said the board had been dominated by people who represent corporate licenses. "They had too much monopoly on the funeral business in Maryland."
liz.kay@baltsun.com
