From the Houston Chronicle: Exclusive: The Texas agency meant to protect the bereaved imploded spectacularly. This is the autopsy.

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Just about as long as people have been dying, regulators have been chasing the hustlers who profit off grief.

One of the first laws regulating the death care industry was passed before the American colonies declared independence, attempting to cap exorbitant funeral costs that impoverished families in Massachusetts. Embalming took off a century later, when Civil War soldiers died far from home and families wanted to bury them close. Embalmers advertised their services in the camps, sometimes even displaying bodies as a testament to their skills. The War Department, fed up with the price gouging and the grisly sales pitches, eventually demanded embalmers get a license to work on dead soldiers and ushered in the modern era of death care regulation in this country.

Texas established its own State Board of Embalmers in 1903. Decades later, that board evolved into the Texas Funeral Service Commission, mandated to license practitioners and facilities, inspect establishments and protect consumers from death care industry abuses like unlicensed funeral practitioners and price gouging and improper handling of bodies. The current version of the funeral commission has seven members, all appointed by the governor, a mix of industry insiders and people with jobs unrelated to death.

The governor’s office did not respond to a list of specific questions for this story. Andrew Mahaleris, the governor’s press secretary, provided an emailed statement: "The Texas Funeral Service Commission exists to protect consumers and uphold high standards in the funeral industry. The Governor expects all state agencies to operate with the highest standards and focus on their core mission of safeguarding Texans."

The commissioners handle high-level tasks, decided by a majority vote in public meetings. They set priorities, conduct agency performance reviews, deal with litigation, and hire and fire the executive director — who runs day-to-day operations. (The commissioners did not respond to a list of written questions or follow-up phone calls. One commissioner, Eric Opiela, when reached by phone, said the commissioners had been instructed not to comment due to pending litigation.)

Nearly a century after the commission’s creation, state auditors were already documenting serious failures. A 1995 report from the Texas auditor’s office slammed it for inadequate licensing procedures, shoddy inspections and failing to monitor repeat offenders; a follow-up two years later noted the same “significant weaknesses” as a result of “inadequate agency management and lack of oversight by the Commissioners.”

Legislators weighed abolishing the funeral commission entirely. In 2003, after a two-year probationary period, legislators allowed it to live on with the expectation that it would continue to improve.

But 20 years later, reports show almost identical problems plaguing the commission’s current operations. Staff turnover is still high; several documents requesting more funding from lawmakers note that salaries aren’t competitive enough to attract people to live in the increasingly expensive state capital. A March 2023 state audit found the agency miscoded its accounting and left cash and checks unsecured. Four former employees — including one who was fired — were able to access the agency’s internal network after leaving, and it was impossible to determine whether they’d downloaded, edited or deleted any files.

The audit confirmed documentation was missing or incomplete. The agency stopped tracking complaints entirely for three months beginning in August 2022 and, after its entire enforcement staff left, did not conduct investigations until a new person was hired that November. (Auditors found 39 unreviewed complaints but noted that there was no way of knowing how many more had been lost.) By the time the agency prepared its performance measure report for the 2023 fiscal year, complaint resolution time had climbed to nearly eight months.

The same month the audit was published, Texas legislators mulled whether to give the agency the additional, massive task of regulating the donation of body parts for research or educational purposes. Several former funeral commission staffers were so dismayed at the prospect of the beleaguered agency taking on more high-stakes work that they submitted comments to lawmakers.

“It is my experience that TFSC is woefully understaffed, overwhelmed, and inefficient,” the agency’s former attorney wrote. “It cannot handle its current duties, much less any additional ones.”

A former executive director noted that, at the time, the funeral commission had a single inspector overseeing all 1,500-plus licensed funeral homes in Texas. They were meant to have an average of 26 open consumer complaints per quarter; they actually averaged 150.

In sum, he said: “They are not protecting the citizens of Texas from deceptive funeral practitioners.”

Another former staffer wrote that the agency “lacks the staffing, the training and the funds to perform even the most rudimentary of duties and responsibilities with regard to … deceased persons.”

The legislators voted to give the agency oversight of the body donation program anyway.


- Texas Funeral Service Commission.

- FAQ about the Texas Funeral Service Commission and Defending Your Funeral Director License.

- Texas Funeral Directors Association.

- Texas Sunset Advisory Commission: Texas Funeral Service Commission.