politics

It's a grim but necessary county job that, unlike building roads or jailing bad guys, usually escapes notice: burying the dead when no one else can.

In some Minnesota localities, as in many other places around the country, indigent and county-assisted burials have been on the rise in the last couple of years as economic conditions have worsened.

State law requires counties to pay basic funeral expenses to bury or cremate those who die alone and destitute, or to provide those services for families who can't afford a basic coffin and burial for a relative.

In Hennepin County, there are hundreds of indigent funerals every year.

This year the county will spend about $1.2 million on indigent burials and funerals, about $250,000 more than was budgeted, said Curt Haats, chief financial officer for the county's Human Services and Public Health Department. To close that gap, the county will tap its reserve fund -- the same fund that the County Board recently voted to shore up with $12 million in additional property tax revenues.

During the first four months of this year, the number of publicly assisted funerals in Hennepin County was running more than 20 percent ahead of last year's totals, though by the end of November that trend had eased and totals now are just ahead of 2008. The county had handled 781 burials and cremations for indigent people through November.

"What we're seeing in Hennepin County is reflective of the general economic situation," Haats said. "What other states and communities are experiencing is [comparable to] how much poverty they're experiencing."

In Olmsted County, where Rochester is located, officials with the Family Support & Assistance Division twice had to lobby their County Board last year for more funding to cover an unexpected 25 percent spike in publicly assisted burials, said Beth Schmidt, the county's burial coordinator.

"We were getting a higher percentage of requests" for burial help from family members, Schmidt said. "People coming in, looking reluctant and wishing they didn't have to" ask for help.

The rising costs are prompting efforts to curb the expenses.

After spending $233,000 on nearly 90 burials in 2008, Olmsted officials this year devised a new policy: Families may opt either for cremation, which costs $1,858, or a traditional burial at the county limit of $2,100. But now those burials must be completed within three days to save on the cost of embalming -- and they don't include a service or public viewing.

As a result of the new restrictions, Schmidt said, families often are choosing cremation -- or they are trying harder to pay for the services themselves by pooling the resources of relatives and friends for a private funeral.

The strategy seems to have helped: By the end of November, Olmsted had paid for about 60 funerals this year, and the county was on track to come in well under its budgeted amount of $155,000 for burial assistance.

Cremation vs. burial

State and local governments around the nation have reported a spike in the number of publicly assisted funerals, indigent burials and unclaimed bodies. The primary reasons are economic, experts say: more layoffs, fewer jobs and lower wages.

According to news reports, the Oregon Legislature raised the filing fee for death certificates to help cover the rising cost of cremations for indigent people. Wayne County, Mich., where Detroit is located, quickly filled a refrigerated truck it had purchased to handle an overflow of unclaimed bodies. Illinois spent an extra $2 million last year to pay for an additional 1,000 burial claims.

Minnesota legislators, grappling for ways to save counties money at a time of shrinking state aid, passed a bill in May making cremation the default method to be used for a deceased person who had been on public assistance and who had no relatives step forward to request a traditional burial. Cremation is less expensive than traditional burial, sometimes by half.

Other metro area counties said they haven't seen a significant recent increase in burial assistance. Even so, in the current tight financial times for local governments, Keith Carlson, executive director of the Minnesota Inter-County Association, said some have been "reassessing the level of services they were routinely providing regarding indigent burials," looking for more flexibility.

State law protects a family's right to use the funeral home of its choice, even if it is seeking government assistance to handle a burial. To be eligible for funeral assistance, the deceased must have been on public assistance or his family must apply for help. To qualify, the deceased individual's estate must add up to less than the cost of a burial.

Hennepin County pays up to $2,100 a person for the services of a funeral home or cemetery. Since an average county-assisted burial or cremation in Minnesota cost $2,406 last year, funeral homes and cemeteries often take a hit. Many decline when offered the business.

One that will say yes is Washburn-McReavy, which has 16 funeral chapels and conducts more county-assisted burials than any funeral service in Hennepin County. Many take place at Washburn's Crystal Lake Cemetery in north Minneapolis, in an area set aside for county burials, said Bill McReavy Jr., an owner of the family-run business.

The county pays less than half of what the firm typically charges for a basic service. But McReavy said that Washburn accepts county-assisted burials because the company owns its own funeral equipment, coaches and cemeteries, and it has staff on hand whether or not a call comes. As a result, it costs Washburn less than it might cost other funeral homes.

"We have more locations and a pretty good program," he said. "Our philosophy is, if they are indigent, if they qualify for assistance, we'll do our part as well."

Kevin Duchschere • 612-673-4455