CHICAGO– Illinois legislators have made a move crucial to implement the Cemetery Oversight Act.
Members of the Illinois Legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules voted Tuesday to approve rules to put the act into effect. The rules next need to be published in the Illinois Register. Once that happens, applications can be made available for cemeteries to get licenses.
Gov. Pat Quinn signed the Cemetery Oversight Act in January 2010. It creates a regulatory structure for the Illinois funeral and cemetery industries and provides oversight and regulation.
The rules were amended to allow for minimal regulations over very small cemeteries maintained primarily by volunteers.
The law came after former workers allegedly dug up graves in a scheme to resell burial plots at Burr Oak Cemetery in the Chicago suburb of Alsip.
