Via Rich:
Trib:
“I’m an estate planner. I try to convince people to plan for your pre-needs,” he explained. “It’s best to have your crypts or your mausoleum already set aside. It takes a major burden off of your family.”
As for his résumé chiseled in granite, Burris said, “that wasn’t me.”
“The cemetery in Oak Woods insisted when I went out to plan my estate that my résumé be put on it. That wasn’t me. That was the manager of the funeral home,” he said. “They insisted that my résumé be put up and they came up with that design and did all that.”
The argument that convinced him, he said, was that former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington is buried at this cemetery and he could not afford for the funeral home to give him the burial he deserved.
“The manager of the cemetery said, ‘Mr. Burris, your accomplishments are too many to let them not be known to young people.’ And he convinced my wife and I that that’s what should be done,” he said. “I questioned it and my wife questioned it, and we knew there would be that type of reaction, but we said we would be willing to overcome the cynicism of the press in order to let it be known for future generations.”
Any suggestion that space was left in case Burris won yet another political office is just not true, he said, adding that the news media is “just dreaming up stuff” and “people are laughing at me.”
“I had nothing to do with who designed that or who left a space at the top, that’s how they put the words in,” Burris said.
“I have been silent about it. But I think it’s really unfair how they treated that situation without any knowledge,” he said. “The press just took it, ran with it and laughed about it. Talked about what my ego is and this is just all about my business.
“If I’m going to teach you how to take care of your estate, how can I teach you or instruct you if I don’t take care of my own?” he implored. “That is my business.”
The man who was three times elected to the position that regulates cemeteries and funeral homes was apparently upsold by monument salesman. (For those unfamiliar with the job of Comptroller in Illinois, it includes overseeing cemeteries and funeral homes).
Q. Is the Comptroller’s office in charge of all Illinois cemeteries and funeral homes?
A. No. The Illinois State Comptroller’s Office is responsible for the oversight of those active, privately-owned cemeteries and funeral homes which sell pre-need goods and services. Other cemeteries and funeral homes, including family burial grounds, those with religious affiliations, and those owned and operated by municipalities, along with those businesses that do not sell on a pre-need basis, are outside the jurisdiction of the Comptroller’s office.
Q. How does the Comptroller regulate those cemeteries and funeral homes that are licensed by the state?
A. Cemeteries and funeral homes that hold an operating license from the Comptroller only receive that license after a process of extensive background checks and financial disclosures is complete. These are safeguards put in place by the Comptroller’s office to ensure that businesses holding an operating license from the state are reputable.
Licensed cemeteries and funeral homes are required to submit annual reports so that the Comptroller’s office may perform periodic audits to examine their finances and see that money taken in from pre-need sales is being entrusted properly and in accordance with the Illinois statutes.
I cannot make this stuff up.
ArchPundit