Naked City

Although Service Corporation International (SCI) was largely responsible for the events that led to the first meeting of the newly reconstituted board of the Texas Funeral Service Commission last Friday, the Houston-based funeral giant was barely mentioned. The six members of the agency's board spent much of the 90-minute meeting discussing budgets and personnel. Meanwhile, the issue that looms largest over the nascent board -- the $445,000 fine that the tiny agency sought to levy against the company last year -- was ignored almost completely.

The meeting began with a speech by the agency's new chairman, Austin lawyer Harry Whittington, who discussed some of the issues at the heart of the SCI controversy, including the propriety of using outside embalmers to do work for funeral homes. It is during the contracting for embalming, said Whittington, that the "trust between the family and the funeral director begins to break down." He added that it's easy to understand how a family may feel a breach of trust has occurred when it "learns that its loved one has been embalmed at another facility by apprentices or provisional embalmers."

Although the new commissioners did not take any action on the fines against SCI, the issue is clearly a concern. The agency's acting administrator, Mike Regan, told the commissioners that the agency will be sending out a letter to all the funeral homes that still have administrative penalties pending against them (i.e., the SCI funeral homes) advising them that their licenses can be revoked at any time.

The commissioners also talked extensively about the need to find a new executive director. Several dozen people have applied for the job, and the agency has narrowed the list to 18 applicants; over the next few weeks, it will winnow that list down to about five people. After the meeting, Whittington said that finding a new executive director is the next key step for the agency, and that it cannot begin to pursue any action against SCI until it addresses its staffing problems. But Whittington also made it clear that he plans to make the TFSC more consumer-friendly. "For the first time in its history, this agency has been given a clear mandate by the Legislature to be more consumer-oriented," he said. The next few months will tell whether Whittington will be able to achieve that goal.