Summary
(1) Existing law, the Cemetery and Funeral Act, establishes the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau within the Department of Consumer Affairs and sets forth its powers and duties relating to the licensure and regulation of, among others, cemeteries and cemetery authorities. Existing law defines specified terms for purposes of the Cemetery and Funeral Act and the general regulation of cemeteries, but provides, however, that these definitions do not apply if expressly stated otherwise. Existing law states that the definitions and specified provisions that regulate cemeteries are inapplicable to religious corporations, a public cemetery, or any private or fraternal burial park, as specified. This bill would also make the definitions and regulation of cemeteries described above inapplicable to any California nonprofit public benefit corporation that manages the continued care and maintenance of an abandoned endowment care cemetery that oversees or performs interments pursuant to prepaid burial contracts and does not enter into any new contracts for the sale of new burial spaces to consumers, as specified. (2) Existing law authorizes a cemetery authority that maintains a cemetery to place its cemetery under endowment care and to establish, maintain, and operate an endowment care fund. Existing law requires each cemetery authority to file with the bureau annually, on or before June 1, or within 5 months after close of their fiscal year, as specified, a written report in a form prescribed by the bureau setting forth, among other things, the amount collected and deposited in both the general and special endowment care funds, as specified. Existing law requires certain information set forth in the report, including the information described above, to be accompanied by an annual audit report prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles of the endowment care fund and special care fund, as specified. This bill would require the above-described information to instead be accompanied by an annual audit report for each year within that reporting period. (3) Existing law generally regulates cemeteries, including private cemeteries. Existing law, however, makes provisions that regulate private cemeteries inapplicable to any religious corporations, public cemeteries, or private or fraternal burial parks, as specified. This bill would also make provisions that regulate private cemeteries inapplicable to any California nonprofit public benefit corporation that manages the continued care and maintenance of an abandoned endowment care cemetery that oversees or performs interments pursuant to prepaid burial contracts, and does not enter into any new contracts for the sale of new burial spaces to consumers, as specified. (4) Existing law authorizes a city or county having a nonendowment care cemetery within its boundaries that threatens or endangers the health, safety, comfort, or welfare of the public to, by resolution of its governing board, as specified, declare the abandonment of the cemetery as a place of future interment. Existing law requires the city or county to permit interment therein of any person who, among other things, is an owner of a plot in the cemetery on the date of adoption of the resolution. After the work that the governing body, in its discretion, finds necessary and practicable has been completed, existing law requires the governing body to immediately thereafter, by resolution containing a legal description of the cemetery, dedicate the abandoned cemetery as a pioneer memorial park, as specified. Existing law requires, upon recordation of the resolution with the county recorder of the county in which the cemetery is located, fee title to the cemetery to vest in the city or county, as specified. Existing law requires any county or city acquiring fee title to a cemetery under these provisions to only use the property for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a pioneer memorial park. This bill would define "abandoned endowment care cemetery" to mean a cemetery that was formerly licensed, as specified, that meets other specified criteria, including that the bureau has conserved the endowment care fund and the property is negatively impacting the public health, safety, or welfare, as specified. The bill would require a county, if it determines that an endowment care cemetery has been abandoned, to provide the owner of the property 90 days' written notice to correct the health, safety, or welfare concerns it has identified. If, after 90 days, those concerns have not been corrected, the bill would require the county to declare the property an abandoned endowment care cemetery and ownership of the real property may be transferred to the county and promptly be recorded in the records of the county. This bill would require that, within 3 years of the transfer of title, the county take title to any remaining endowment care funds of the prior cemetery authority held by the bureau, and of all necessary books, records, property, and assets, which shall be placed in a special fund within the county treasury and only be expended on care, maintenance, or embellishment of the abandoned endowment care cemetery. The bill would authorize the county to transfer the care and management of an abandoned endowment care cemetery to a California nonprofit public benefit corporation, as specified.
