Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill Thursday restoring the public’s access to funeral home inspection reports.
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The new law will allow Coloradans to learn the details of what inspectors are finding as they ramp up scrutiny of the industry in the wake of several scandals involving fake ashes and mishandled remains.
The new law also increases penalties for the crime of abusing a corpse.
A KUNC News investigation on funeral home misconduct discovered last year that lawmakers had quietly removed the public’s access to funeral home inspection reports in a 2024 bill that was meant to restore trust in the funeral home industry.
The loss of access blocked the public from learning why the state was disciplining several facilities.
State Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta, who sponsored the bipartisan 2024 bill making the inspection reports secret, said last month he wanted to reverse the change “because of journalists asking for access, and we want more transparency for the public.”
Shelia Canfield-Jones, who said the FBI informed her in 2023 that the Return to Nature funeral home in southern Colorado gave her powdered concrete instead of her daughter’s cremated remains, praised the decision.
“I think that's good,” she said of restoring access to the documents under the Colorado Open Records Act. “That's good for people who are willing to go and look those up.”
The state will withhold photos from inspection reports or any information that could identify a deceased individual.
Canfield-Jones encouraged state regulators to proactively post inspection documents online instead of requiring people to request them.
“That would give you an insight to how (mortuaries) operate, and you know if they are following those procedures, or if there's a problem,” she said.
The documents will specifically reveal whether refrigerators storing bodies are set at the correct temperature, whether the facilities are sanitary, whether or not workers have the proper equipment and if records are properly maintained, among other things.
Sponsors of the bill that removed access to the records in 2024 couldn’t explain why the change was made and not discussed publicly.
Canfield-Jones and transparency advocates had previously blasted making the inspection reports secret.
“The consumer can only be protected with the information that we receive from the people who do the inspection,” she told KUNC last year.
Jeff Roberts, the executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, questioned who was being served by making the reports private.
“It's not the public, it's not people who are interested in knowing what happens to the remains of their loved ones,” he said at the time.
The law restoring access is scheduled to take effect in August.
