All right, good afternoon.

I'd like to call this public hearing to order for the committee on health.

Uh today is Monday, March 23rd, 2026.

The time is 1230 p.m.

I'm at large councilmember Christina Henderson, chair of the committee on health.

We are in room 500 of the John A.

Wilson building, and this is a hybrid hearing with public witnesses testifying virtually and in person and government witnesses testifying in person.

Today we will consider three bills before the committee, and then the committee will discuss the fiscal year 2025 performance of the Board of Funeral Directors, which was added to our committee purview back in January.

First, uh Bill 26-525, the Personal Health Data Security Amendment Act 2025, which was introduced by myself along with Councilmembers Alan, Bonds, Lewis George Freeman, Nado, and Robert White.

It would establish regulations for entities that collect, process, and sell personal health data.

The bill would grant consumers the right to confirm whether their data is being collected and to request its deletion.

The legislation also prohibits the use of geofencing around locations that provide health services and requires entities that collect personal health data to publish clear privacy policies and obtain consent before collecting or sharing data.

As companies continue to develop new ways to collect and share personal health data, it's critical that the district laws keep pace.

This legislation ensures that residents have greater transparency control and protection over their personal health data.

I just want to note for the record um that the Committee on Health previously held a hearing on a similar health data privacy uh bill uh called the Consumer Health Privacy Um Protection Act uh ChIPA.

Uh we held this hearing in October of 2024.

Accordingly, many of the issues raised in this bill have already been considered by the committee, but given the time lapse and well, this is a new piece of legislation.

We're reopening this conversation.

Bill 26-47, the funeral directors licensing reform amendment act of twenty twenty five would amend the district's funeral services licensing framework by distinguishing funeral directing from embalming and establishing a separate embalmer's license.

The bill defines the scope of practice for both funeral directors and embalmers, updates the licensure requirements, and replaces the current funeral director apprenticeship model with a new internship requirements that includes supervised training hours for both funeral directing and for embalming interns.

Or acoline hydrolysis.

Myself included.

Joined by Councilmember Donnie Crawford, who I believe uh when she was a staffer not that long ago, uh wrote one of these pieces of legislation.

Uh Councilmember Crawford, thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me, Chairperson Henderson.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Yes, good afternoon to everyone.

Um I will not be able to stay long and I'm not a member of the committee, but I am interested as Chairperson Henderson said, in the Green Deathcare Option Amendment Act as I drafted it last year.

And it models uh bill that I saw in Maryland uh that authorized this water cremation, and I thought it was a really interesting topic.

Um I would like to see the bill advance, and I hope to work with the committee uh going forward.

And hello to Chairperson McGuire, too.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Crawford.

Okay, so we're gonna proceed to um public testimony today.

Uh we didn't have our public witnesses say what they were gonna talk to us about, so it's gonna be uh choose your own adventure type of situation.

Um so that'll be fun.

Don't worry.

Everything is gonna be for the record.

Um everyone will have three minutes to testify.

Uh you're obviously welcome to submit longer testimony for the record.

This is not because we don't want to hear what you have to say, but it is because we do have a some time constraints today.

So we'll give you a nudge on your time, but there are clocks all around us.

Just don't ignore them, or Ashley over there will have to use the buzzer, which I don't like to do because I feel like that's rude, but we will if we have to.

Okay.

I have four chairs.

Justin Palmer, DC Hospital Association, Margaret Durkent, TechNEC, Melissa Wasser from ACLU of the District of Columbia, and Rachel Mackey.

Awesome.

Justin, when you're ready.

All right.

Uh good afternoon, Chairperson Henderson and members of the Committee on Health.

My name is Justin Palmer, and I'm the vice president for public policy and external affairs at the District of Columbia Hospital Association.

I appreciate the opportunity to present testimony on B260525, the Personal Health Data Security Amendment Act of 2025.

DCHA and our members recognize the immense responsibility and trust that patients place in our organizations as we handle sensitive private health information.

As entities covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, we operate under one of the most comprehensive privacy frameworks in the country.

These federal requirements establish strict rules for how information is collected, used, disclosed, and safeguarded.

HIPAA protections extend not only to health care providers, but also to vendors that process health information on behalf of providers through business associate uh agreements.

We support the intent of the legislation before us today.

Our members believe that we uh want to avoid unintended consequences.

We uh request that the committee include language clarifying that HIPAA covered entities and their business associates are exempt from the requirements of this bill.

As currently drafted, the bill does not uh address how entities that function as HIPAA business associates would be treated under this new framework, which creates uh some ambiguity.

Hospitals rely on these business associates for critical services such as electronic health records, data storage, patient engagement tools, remote patient monitoring technologies, and by exempting HIPAA covered entities and business associates, we can ensure that they're not subject to duplicative and overlapping requirements when handling protected health information.

Um HIPAA protected uh information primarily uh includes that that is shared for treatment, payment, and health care operations.

And we think that this narrow exemption for hypocalar entities would be helpful.

Again, we do not uh oppose the protections under the personal health data, but we believe that the stakeholder engagement is necessary before the legislation is adopted to understand how it impacts delivery uh and use of data by regulated entities.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Uh Ms.

Durkin.

Good afternoon, Chair Henderson, Margaret Durkin with TechNet.

Technet is a tech trade association.

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to speak today on B 260525.

We agree that the protection of consumer health data is of utmost importance, and we do understand the intent of the bill.

However, we are concerned about the bill's frameworks, bill's framework for a few reasons.

The absence of a federal privacy standard, interoperability among states is key.

And some of the provisions in this bill would make the district an outlier.

Some of the definitions diverge from most states' privacy laws, and we believe that getting these definitions worded correctly and obligations targeted is critically important for businesses to thrive in the district, as well as to align consumer expectations with what they see in other states.

This bill also calls for a consumer health data privacy policy.

Most, if not all, entities already publish privacy policies with information on the categories of such data.

And also the mandate on categories of sources plus the disclosure in the bill is also a bespoke requirement for the district, which would lead to business compliance that would be new for businesses and would take time to implement.

We appreciate the HE enforcement.

However, we we ask for clarifying language that would make it clear that nothing in the bill would provide for a private right of action.

And in terms of the rules process, we believe that any attempt at rules can oftentimes run far afield of the underlying statute.

We've seen it in other states where rules have been proposed and they run completely far afield of what the legislator passed and what stakeholders engaged on.

The bill's immediate effective date, should the bill advance, that would be problematic for our member companies as they would need time to come into compliance with the law.

And finally, we believe that an omnibus privacy solution should something move forward, is an ideal situation to again create that interoperability as best as possible with the other 20 plus states that have passed privacy bills.

These laws allow for rights for consumers, such as the access to correct, delete, port their data.

And oftentimes there's an opt-in consent regime for the use of sensitive data, which often includes health data used to reveal personal health data.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak today and happy to take questions.

Thank you.

Melissa, good afternoon, Chair Henderson and members of the committee.

Melissa Wasser, Senior Policy Counsel at the ACLU of DC.

ACLUDC supports Bill 26-525, the Personal Health Data Security Amendment Act of 2025.

We would urge this committee to move this bill forward with some changes to strengthen the legislation.

Our goal is that if your personal health information is collected, the individual should be in the driver's seat.

While we will follow up with the committee directly to discuss additional necessary changes to the legislation today during my short time, I will cover three areas to strengthen the legislation.

First, ensuring that we prohibit geofencing to prevent further tracking and tailor any HIPAA exemptions to protected health information, not entire entities.

Two, requiring clear, unambiguous consent before any entity can sell, collect, or disclose personal health data.

And three, shortening the right to deletion period to 45 days to be in line with other states' deletion requirements.

This bill takes important targeted steps to establish protections for the personal health data of district residents, including limiting one of the greatest threats posed by the sea of data that we are swimming in abuse of our geolocation.

Prohibiting geofencing will prevent further tracking and targeting of individuals based on their location alone, but any exemptions for HIPAA's existing coverage should be tailored to protected health information, not entire entities.

While individuals in the past shared health information with a relatively small number of entities, many of which were covered by HIPAA, individuals today often share personal health data with or have their health data captured by non-covered entities.

To further accommodate other important uses of health information, the committee should ensure exemptions to accommodate HIPAA are limited to the protected health information already covered by HIPAA.

This is crucial.

Many large companies have multiple lines of business, only a small number of which may be covered by HIPAA.

Exempting an entire entity based on one line of business would eviscerate protections for data collected by a retailer's other lines of business.

The bill would also require consent from a person before an entity could sell, offer to sell, collect, or disclose personal health data to a third party.

However, in its current form, that version of consent is very easy to manufacture in a form that buries consent in legalese at the bottom of a nine-page document or has been designed to prevent you from declining.

To strengthen this legislation, the bill should require clear, affirmative, specific, and unambiguous consent from a person before that entity can sell, collect, or disclose that personal health data.

Finally, this bill would create that right to deletion and honor verified deletion requests within 183 days.

That is an extremely long period of time to honor a deletion request while that data is actively being sold, shared, and used to monitor someone, combined with the required notices and permissible extensions outlined in the legislation.

It could be over a year before that data is deleted.

To prevent that from occurring, we would ask the committee to change that language to reflect a 45-day requirement, bringing DC in line with other states.

Seeing as my time is about to expire, we're happy to answer any questions you may have, and thank you for the invitation to testify today.

Thanks, Melissa.

Rachel.

Good afternoon, Chairperson and Henderson and members of the committee.

My name is Rachel Mackey, and I'm a licensed funeral director serving families in the Washington metropolitan area.

I hold licenses in the District of Columbia, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and I also maintain a courtesy card in Maryland.

In addition, I serve on the exam development team for the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards, where I contribute to the development of the national licensing examinations.

I'm here today in support of B26-0047, the Funeral Director's Licensing Reform Amendment Act of 2025.

From a practical standpoint, this legislation helps align the district with neighboring jurisdictions like Virginia and Maryland.

That alignment expands the applicant pool and supports the workforce mobility in this region where professionals frequently live and work across state lines.

I would like to note, however, that the terminology used for licensure categories may benefit from further consideration.

Virginia and Maryland use slightly different but well-established licensing structures, and aligning more closely with one of those models could reduce confusion for both consumers and people entering the field.

Additionally, some language in the bill is not fully aligned with current education and examination practices.

There's no funeral director specific programs accredited by the American Board of Funeral Service Education.

And the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards no longer administers a state board examination.

Instead, they offer the national board examination in separate art and science components.

I also have a concern with the bill as currently written regarding reciprocity.

The requirement that applicants must have a five years of continuous practices before qualifying for licensure in the district will create an unnecessary barrier for otherwise qualified professionals.

In the Washington metropolitan area, many funeral service professionals began their career in neighboring states with equivalent education, internship, and examination requirements.

It is also common for individuals to relocate early in their careers.

I personally moved from my initial state of licensure within my first year and later reciprocated to the district.

With that adjustment, I believe legislation can both maintain high professional standards and support a strong accessible workforce for the families that we serve.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I, of course, welcome any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you so much to this panel of witnesses.

I think Justin, Margaret, and I think ACOU all testified on Chippa.

Although my memory is fuzzy.

So thank you for being here again.

Margaret, I wanted to follow up and ask do you all have like a matrix document of what has been done in other states?

Obviously, TechNet, I mean, you track a lot of different things, but specifically around the health piece, I imagine that you might have a particular resource for your members about how each state has sort of moved on this or not.

So in terms of omnibus privacy, I'd recommend uh IAPP or IFPP, they have a really great matrix of what bills have been passed.

That's where I reference the 20 plus.

In terms of consumer health data, Connecticut has amended their omnibus privacy law to include some aspects of consumer health data within the last few years.

And I'm happy to follow up with those exact bill numbers.

So I would tell you, I mean, I heard you when you are like, oh, we prefer omnibus.

Everybody, of course, prefers omnibus.

You know how complicated an omnibus would be to get through the DC council, though?

It would be instead of one committee, there would be like four or five, which would take like two years for everybody to like calendar to align.

Um and also some of the things are different.

So when I was a I was committee director for the committee on education, we did a data privacy bill, but specifically on education.

And I think the issues for education-related data or those education-related tech companies or the products who traffic in that space is a little bit different than on the health side of things.

Why omnibus?

Or yeah.

So it goes along with our argument about the interoperability among states.

As you know, we don't have a federal privacy framework right now.

Yeah.

That would change all problems here.

Right, exactly.

And so in the absence of that, we advocate for consistency across states.

Right.

And so, in our view, with these omnibus privacy laws, things like personal health data typically falls under the category of sensitive data.

And in most states, privacy regimes, that's actually opt-in for sensitive data.

And so the health data is under sensitive data, and so that creates the right of someone wanting to, well, it's currently in most states opt-out, and you would have to give affirmative consent to allow for the collection of the sensitive data, which in turn would be health data.

Yeah.

I mean, I feel like in this particular situation, though, right?

Data is probably like one of the hottest commodities on the market right now.

Um building out all of these data centers simply are sort of around this.

Um I know your testimony is longer, so we'll definitely take a look.

Um, and I heard you on in terms of the immediate effective date of anything that we pass.

Um, obviously we want to provide grace to allow for folks to even get into compliance.

Um I hear you.

Aligning expectations to what consumers have in other jurisdictions.

Um I like to think sometimes that DC is a little special snowflake, so sometimes it doesn't always apply what's going on in Connecticut, what's happening here, um, especially since we're in the our very close proximity to the other jurisdictions.

But um, we'll take a look at your further testimony.

But thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Um, Melissa, um you you spent a little bit of time talking about um unambiguous consent.

What does that look like in a situation?

So I remember from the 2024 hearing, um, someone came and testified and talked about how of this sort of notion of consent fatigue.

So right now, every time you go to a website, they ask you about um your cookies and your preferences and whatever.

And frankly, I just want to read the article.

Like I don't, you know, I don't want to read your little like spiel and blurb, and I don't want to pick and choose.

And so either you most people, I would say most, because they're definitely people the lawyers amongst us are gonna read everything.

But the rest of us are probably like, let me just X out of this real quick and just do what I have to do.

And so what are your thoughts about that in terms of the consent fatigue piece for each and every thing that you do?

Yeah, thank you for the question.

Yeah, I mean uh we've seen and in our um written testimony that we'll submit.

We have a couple citations that I think go to this, but in both I think the healthcare and in the data context, the research has like consistently shown that people either do not read or do not understand fully the consent forms of it.

Um and so what we want to make sure is that um it's people are truly understanding what they're what they're signing and truly understanding.

And so I understand the um consent fatigue, but I think maybe um when we follow up with your office too, we can have a broader conversation of what that looks like.

I know we've been in touch with um our friends at ACLU National who have also been across the country looking at other states and what they have in terms of consent to help kind of make sure that we don't keep pushing that consent fatigue because I do remember I did not testify myself on SHIPA in 2024.

Um, but I can go back and take a look and follow up with your office to make sure that we avoid that because I hear you every time you're on the website, I see those little buttons at the bottom.

And it's like it's too much.

Sure.

And even for things that you didn't necessarily think it would be on that are not necessarily health related, right?

Like I'm on the GAAP website.

I'm just trying to buy some genes, but now you're asking about do you want this to be tracked?

Do you want this particular information?

Um it I see the I see the intent.

I just want to make sure that we avoid pitfalls of particularly when it comes to health data.

I feel like people should take a beat and probably think a little bit about um how you want your data stored or sold or whatever, um, particularly for that type of data, which is a little bit different than retail.

Right.

And I think when you come when you think about your health data in that moment, you might be thinking the fatigue might be at the front of your mind.

Yeah.

And I think again, when we come back to this bill, we want individuals to be in the driver's seat when it comes to their data.

They're not thinking about in six months, oh, I clicked on this thing and now I'm gonna get these ads for something related to this health data.

You know, they're only thinking about in that moment, yeah.

I just want to click through this and get and get it over with.

So that having that specific clear and uh consent is very, very important for this.

Okay.

All right.

Um Ms.

Mackie, thank you so much for being here.

Um you named off a bunch of different states for which you have a license in, um, which I think um gives you some good uh views here.

And um I did, I was gonna ask you the question about um the continuous practice, but you already answered that in terms of that would be very restrictive.

Um so I wanted to ask um so Taylor and I have been going in a deep dive of looking at other jurisdictions licensing, and we did notice that the language used in this proposed bill is a little bit different than our friends in Maryland or Virginia.

Um is there is there a best practice resource of where we should look for appropriate modern terminology the international conference of funeral service examining boards does have some like model documentation.

Um as a profession, we have not decided or have a consensus on preferred terminology or language, which is a struggle.

Okay.

Um so what Maryland and Virginia are doing are because I think for was it for somebody calls it morticians.

Maryland.

Which I was like, is that dated?

Minnesota just changed from using mortician to funeral director this past year.

Okay.

So other states are moving away from it.

Okay.

All right.

We have learned um in so Board of Funeral Directors is is new to us, but boards that license professionals are not.

So on the health side, obviously I have all of the um health professionals under us, and we have learned um that consistency and licensing types is better for folks.

Um so we're we're gonna try our best to um align on that front.

I did have a question.

If you had a thought or a feel about the hours that are required for apprenticeship versus internship, I thought it all sounded reasonable and in line.

I think it's like 2,000 hours.

2,000 hours supervised.

That's pretty sure that's Virginia's same requirement because they have a check mark at the first thousand and then the second thousand is the completion.

So we're in line with what other states are doing.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

Appreciate it.

Thank you to the rest of you guys.

Um if you didn't provide your written test for money for the record, we'd like it so we can do uh a thorough job on our end.

But thank you.

Okay.

We're going to go to our next um panel.

So I only have three more people in person.

So if you um wanted to speak, you know, let us know.

Uh Blair Nelson from Joseph Galler Sons.

Oh, that's uh Andrew Kingman.

There he is, Saint Andrew, and Zachary Taylor and then the Consumer Data Industry Association.

Okay.

Was there anybody who um intended to testify today, but I don't have you, or you are on my virtual list, but you want to you're here.

Okay, great.

All right.

Uh Mr.

Nelson, when you ready?

Oh, hold on one second.

You just got to hit the button.

There you go.

Good afternoon, Chairperson Anderson.

My name is Blair Nelson.

I represent Galler Sons Funeral Home.

I'm here to speak in favor of 2647, the Funeral Directors Licensing Reform Act.

Many states have passed legislation to create separate funeral director and bomber licenses, as does this bill.

Creating separate licenses increases the opportunity for employment in the district by making the funeral profession more accessible to a wider range of prospective candidates.

As more states have introduced separate licenses, mortuary schools have introduced curricula specific to funeral directing.

While the American Board of Funeral Service Education accredits mortuary science programs, which combine both funeral directing and embalming, they do not currently accredit any funeral director specific degrees.

However, many schools have created these degree programs in response to the requests of various states.

For example, both Bright Point Community College and Tidewater Community College in Virginia now offer an associate of applied science in funeral directing.

These programs fall under the college's overall accreditation, which is provided by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.

Therefore, I would suggest that the language in Line 66 be changed to read the American Board of Funeral Service Education or an accrediting agency approved by the U.S.

Department of Education.

I'm a past president of the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards, and as Ms.

Mackey stated, we no longer offer the state exams because so many states have now introduced both separate funeral director and embalming uh licenses.

Instead, the national board exam is now offered in two parts, either of which may be taken separately.

The National Board exam tests candidates on the specifics of funeral directing, while the sciences exam tests tests candidates in the area of embalming.

Therefore, I would suggest that line 69 be changed to read national examination in the arts.

And lines 69 and 84 eliminate or state board examination in sciences.

Lastly, I would urge the committee to eliminate the requirement that a licensed funeral director from another state have practiced for five consecutive years in the state of licensure prior to applying for licensure in the district.

It serves no practical purpose.

Not only does it limit the pool of candidates able to work in the district, but it makes it more difficult for funeral homes in the district to recruit and hire candidates.

According to a survey conducted by the National Funeral Directors Association, over half of funeral directors currently plan on retiring within the next five years.

As the death rate increases and existing licenses retire, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates almost 6,000 new funeral directors will be needed annually, while currently mortuary schools in the United States only graduate about 2,000 students per year.

To meet this shortfall, we must not employ impediments in the path to licensure of qualified candidates.

Additionally, I would note that for licensees such as doctors and nurses, there is no similar requirement placed upon their uh experience when they apply in the district.

And this would also eliminate in this section to also allow for the portability of professional licenses for service members and their spouses as called for in the Federal Service Members Civil Relief Act.

Thank you.

I have so many questions.

But I'm gonna go to Andrew.

Oh, turn your mic on.

Thank you.

We good.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair.

My name is Andy Kingman.

I represent the State Privacy and Security Coalition.

We are a multi-sector coalition of about 35 companies.

I have a background as a privacy compliance attorney as well.

Now I'm thinking maybe I should go be a mortuary director.

We did submit written testimony.

So happy to refer to that as needed.

And also want to make clear that in general, similar to my colleague with Techno, we don't oppose the uh concept of having health data protections and having heightened protections around that type of data.

Our concern really is with implementation and making sure that uh companies can understand uh and that can it that it makes sense for consumers and that that's really what we're looking at.

So uh to the conversation uh with the prior panel.

Um, you know, our our biggest concern is probably the definition of health data at this point uh because it is so broad.

And when we talk about consent fatigue, uh, you know, having making sure that the definition of health data is scoped correctly in addition to the definite the definition of consent, make sure that consumers aren't constantly, to your point, Madam Chair, bombarded with consent notices.

We want to make sure that when their health data is about to be collected, that they do kind of pause for a second and think about it because they're not seeing those uh inference, those uh notices pop up.

And so making sure that that's properly scoped is very important uh to that point.

Um the lack of the the current bill has a lag of application to just Washington, D.C.

residents.

Um, and that's very important for a couple of reasons.

One on the compliance side, um, both Virginia and Maryland have their own privacy bills uh or privacy laws.

And so um trying to, you know, it's not really realistic to try to keep track of who is coming in and out of the district every day and you know when a Virginia uh resident would be located in Washington, D.C.

and have different rights and responsibilities apply to them versus when they go home at night.

Um we also want to avoid any anti-privacy consequences that would incentivize that kind of tracking of collecting extra data to track people when they're moving back and forth.

So in particular for uh a region like Washington, D.C., where you have so much uh non-resident traffic, applying it to residents is is very important.

Um and then lastly, just making sure that the definitions um in the bill are standardized with uh you know what other states um have done regarding uh you know the definition of consent as we talked about the definition of sale, uh, et cetera.

So um with that, happy to answer any questions.

Thanks, Andrew.

Uh Zachary.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair.

Pleasure to be here again.

Uh Zachary Taylor, uh Director of Government Relations with the Consumer Data Industry Association.

Uh we represent the consumer reporting industry, so that's the three National Credit Bureaus, especially credit bureaus, background check companies, time screeners.

Uh, today, here with some concerns similar to what we've heard from our colleagues at SPSC and Technet about the breadth of this bill and its incongruity with what other states have done on this particular topic.

Um we're concerned about in the context of the consumer reporting system.

The definition of personal health data appears to be so broad that it could restrict the furnishing of information from even non-health care providing entities, uh, largely due to the definition in 7F.

Um, our suggestion is to follow along with what other states across the country have done in this particular set of concerns if you're not going to pursue a comprehensive data privacy bill, and that would be to establish clear exemptions for data covered by the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act or the Federal Graham Leash Bliley Act.

The Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act tightly regulates our member companies and those entities that furnish to us.

It tells consumers what's being collected, a right to know who's looking at it, and then also a right to dispute or correct information in the event that there are errors.

Um without this clarification, some of the rights established in this proposal could inadvertently restrict the furnishing, hurt people's credit files by making it less complete, less accurate, less full, uh, but also could extend the right of uh deletion to some of that information as well.

We're concerned about that.

What that could do to district residents.

Same concerns with the Graham Leech Blowly Act, which regulates financial information, how it's shared, whether you are a financial institution or not under that law, the protections do follow the data.

So in both of these instances, we would encourage the adoption of some uh short clear amendments to ensure that this is targeted to the concerns of the committee and not uh the consumer reporting system or other applications of this information.

I think one of the reasons that we work closely across the country is so often data can move uh between different entities, but also touch different streams.

Uh information in a credit report may come from a financial institution, may come from public records, and may come from the DMV.

And so if you do have these sort of piecemeal approach to data privacy, whether it be healthcare in one setting, education one setting, you can end up with competing concepts, competing provisions that make it impossible for compliance.

When does this law apply?

Hard to tell with how broadly this is written.

We've worked with the ACLU and other states.

We've worked with our peers here to try to get uniform uh standards across the country.

We'd love to do so with the council as this bill moves forward to avoid those unintended consequences.

Um that's uh that's where we are.

So thank you for your time.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Um thank you so much to this panel of witnesses.

Um Mr.

Taylor, I want to start with you.

Sure.

Um obviously I remember you from our medical debt hearing.

So I'm a little confused.

Is personal health data on a my consumer report?

So no, it's not, but no, of course not.

Uh but the but again, I would say I would point you to I just put it away.

I should have anticipated question.

Uh so any information collected by a health care provider, health plan or legal entity regarding the individual's health status care or related payments, we believe that could capture credit card data.

Oh, the related payments.

We don't see, if you recall from the medical debt hearing, we don't see the transaction level information.

So we don't know if you pay to copay on your annex card or if you went to CVS or you know, purchased a newspaper subscription.

Okay.

Point taken.

Thank you.

Um also glad we clarify that for the record because I think some people would be like, wait, what?

Why why does the consumer reports need to know in terms of the health data piece?

Gotcha on that.

Um thank you for being here and uh look forward to reading your full testimony.

Um Mr.

Kingman, thank you for being here as well.

You know, the thing you sort of said in your um the portion of your testimony around applicability to DC residents because of the movement back and forth.

Frankly, that just highlights the need for why there should really be a federal piece here.

Because I don't want to it to get into the situation where people are like, oh, okay, well, first off, I've got um providers who either work here and live there or live there and work here, companies back and forth.

But this sort of niche piece of like, oh, well, we can sell the Virginians data, but we can't sell the DC person's data because of their particular pieces here.

I think you just kind of highlight in your testimony um that piece.

I want to say that the intent of this bill is not to make it overly complicated for the implementation.

The intent of this bill is to protect the privacy of um individuals, and the best way to do that is to make sure that one companies have a clear understanding of what the rules of the road are.

That includes definitions.

So, you know, I think a lot of what we do in terms of legislative writing is making sure that our definitions are tight and strong.

And so we'll tell definitely take another look at that.

Um, but then also making sure that it could be easily communicated to those who are doing the implementation on um the back end.

Um I will just say, you know, for some people who think that this isn't necessarily an issue.

I was dealing on another particular matter related to public safety and um automatic license plate readers.

And of course, like sort of going through that process, and I realized like, oh wow, there was actually law enforcement in Texas who um search for the license plate information of somebody who they believed was leaving the state for an abortion.

So now I have um transportation, public safety, and health kind of all wrapped up into one particular thing.

And this bill doesn't deal with that particular data in that particular case, but it comes up in the places that you least expect it.

If you turn your mic on, yeah, sorry.

I'm gonna get the hang of this.

Yeah, it's a good thing.

Um we've seen other states deal with that in the context of what's called the shield law.

Yep.

Where if another state comes to try to domesticate the service of process, that the issuing magistrate or judge within DC has to require them to attest under penalties of perjury that they're not seeking information for that purpose.

Yeah.

And so that's sort of the way to handle the extra territoriality or folks who are coming from out of state, just from a data privacy spot when you have rights that attach to a consumer, right?

Or that consumer's data, you just need to understand where what you need to sort of assign them a residency to know what rights apply.

Um I I will say both Virginia and Maryland do require opt-in consent for sensitive data.

Um again, happy to be a resource and help you all work through this.

Um I don't know if it's helpful this to your question to to uh Ms.

Durkin earlier.

Um Washington State has a standalone health data bill.

Okay.

Um Nevada has a standalone law.

Um Connecticut and Maryland uh have both added um health data protections explicitly to their bill.

Minnesota's looking at doing the same this year.

Okay, that's helpful.

Thank you.

Um, and finally, Mr.

Nelson.

I have so many questions.

Um let me just start with this, just so I have a basic understanding.

Okay.

At first I was a little um we saw the legislation and it was about to split the licenses in Ballmer and Funeral Directing.

I was like, okay, that makes sense.

But when we looked at the schools who have these programs, and then also the exam, at least it seemed to me that in order to be a funeral director, you needed to know something about embalming.

The uh programs I mentioned earlier, both at Bright Point and um John Tyler, excuse me.

John Tyler is was uh is now Bright Point.

The um programs I mentioned at Bright Point and at Tidewater both have um a number of courses around embalming so that a funeral director will understand the process and be able to speak about it intelligently.

But the understanding is that you're either an embalmer or you're a funeral director, or you can be both.

And there are some people that don't want to be embalmers, they want to be funeral directors.

So these programs have taken into account the fact that you need to know something or have some background.

Um I can certainly provide you with the curriculum for each of those programs, and you would see that there are a number of science courses that are required of those graduates.

Okay.

Could an embalmer open their own funeral home?

Uh well, that would be a uh a question you would have to ask the uh licensing agency here, but I know in Virginia, for example, uh no, you would have to have uh a licensed funeral director, a funeral service licensee.

Virginia actually has three licenses.

They call the if you have if you hold both of the licenses, you're called a funeral service licensee, or you can be a funeral director, or you can be an embalmer.

The pat the law was passed in night uh 2019.

Okay.

It was finally enacted in 2021.

Um since that time it has grown.

Uh Virginia has licensed 68 funeral directors and currently has 40 uh interns in the funeral director program.

So it's definitely opening up the industry and and drawing people in who otherwise might not have been attracted to funeral service.

Right.

I mean, I think that part of your testimony when you said there was a survey that was done, and over half the current funeral directors plan to retire in the next five years, and that we are not producing enough new people to uh, you know, it's a little concerning.

Replace and and do those uh pieces.

Okay.

Um what we are proposing would have DC have a funeral director's license and embalmer's license, you would have the apprenticeship piece and then the courtesy card.

Is that right?

We already have the courtesy, but I'm saying like if we did this update, the courtesy card.

Courtesy card is typically very specific in the case.

Right, it's the reciprocity.

Well, well, it's it's not really reciprocity.

It allows you to come pick up a bot.

Sorry.

Or in some states it allows you essentially, if if, for example, if you were a uh a Virginia funeral director and you wanted to perform a burial in in the state of Maryland, you could use the courtesy card for that specific purpose.

You couldn't come into Maryland and just open up a practice and say I have a courtesy card, I'm a licensed funeral director.

That that's not the way the courtesy card process works.

Okay.

Oh, this is so fascinating.

To need a courtesy card to be able to perform a funeral in another jurisdiction.

Yes, ma'am.

There is, you had asked earlier.

Were there problems before?

No, I think it's every state wants to make sure that uh they have some jurisdiction over the people that are coming in and practicing within their state.

Yeah.

Um I know Virginia did have an issue at with one individual that was actively practicing on a courtesy card and it came to Virginia's attention, and that was shut down.

Um regarding the licensing, the conference of uh the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards has a very thorough um uh handbook online that details all of the educational and licensing requirements for every state and territory as well as um uh Canadian provinces, and it's available online.

I'm happy to um provide that link.

Yeah, uh we'll we'll definitely take a look.

I mean, I think again, we're trying to make sure that um I think it is helpful for DC in particular to align as much as we can to Maryland and Virginia because we have folks who go back and forth through our jurisdictions more frequently than not.

Um so we'll definitely um take a look on those.

But thank you for being here.

Thank you all.

If you could provide your written testimony for the record, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Okay, we're gonna go to our virtual witnesses.

I'm gonna call all six of them at the same time.

Um if you haven't done a virtual uh panel with us before, you have to affirmatively accept our invitation to become a panelist.

Um Ms.

Hubbard from the DC Chamber of Commerce, Haley Morris um from uh Earth Funeral, uh Amelia Kamala, DC Policy Center, John Kirksley, Sean Heath, and um Sarah Giogan.

And sorry if I've said that incorrectly.

I can give you just a minute.

Bring folks in.

Okay.

Um I see Ms.

Hubbard.

So when you're ready.

Good afternoon, Chairperson Henderson and members of the Committee on Health.

I'm Sniati Hubbard, and I serve as president and CEO of the DC Chamber of Commerce as a native Washingtonian, and on behalf of our more than 1,000 members across all eight wards, employers large and small, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on Council Bill 26-525.

My testimony has been abbreviated for time, and I respectfully request that my full written testimony, which contains additional detail and supporting recommendation on each point be entered into the record.

So the primary focus of the Personal Health Data Security Amendment Act, the bill, is the protection of personal health data, and in particular, extending protections currently afforded by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA, and General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, that are not fully addressed under current District of Columbia law.

The chamber supports the goal of providing updated protections for sensitive data, including health data, but we also recognize the importance of ensuring that our consumers, patients, and residents understand how their information is being collected and used.

However, rather than addressing this issue through a common framework adopted by many other states, the bill takes a different approach, focusing exclusively on personal health data, and that approach imposes legal uncertainty and operational burdens that extend well beyond the data processing activities the legislation is intended to address.

The chamber has several concerns regarding the scope and application of the bill for the following reasons.

This is not a narrowly crafted health care privacy bill.

As we heard from previous witnesses, the definition of personal health data is broad.

It defines such data as information reasonably linkable to an individual in connection with physical or mental health.

That definition is not limited to medical providers or even efforts to reach wellness applications or wearable devices.

It would capture any data, healthcare specific or otherwise, that could theoretically be used to make a health inference, or if any non-medical company is not actually using the data to do so.

Examples include routine over-the-counter consumer products such as ibuprofen, toilet paper, or end acids.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I was out of time.

No, go ahead.

Oh, okay.

Uh so it also defines terms such as process broadly to include collecting, using, sharing, analyzing, storing, or transmitting personal health data.

It defines sale as the transfer of personal health data to a third party for monetary or other valuable considerations and does not clearly exempt common vendor or affiliate relationships.

Because the definition these definitions are broad, many routine businesses' data activities could fall within the bill's scope.

The bill also diverges from most states' privacy laws and underlying privacy statutes.

The bill also establishes a sweeping opt-in regime, which is impractical and does not effectively protect privacy.

This bill would mandate consumer consent for routine everyday activities.

And the bill also requires consent before selling personal health data and before collecting or disclosing when it is not reasonably necessary to provide a requested product or service.

The bill's deletion require rules are overly prescriptive and depart from best practices elsewhere, and the geofencing provision is overly broad.

So we look forward to working with the committee and its staff to achieve the objective of protecting this data in a thoughtful and practical and effective manner.

And I appreciate the opportunity to testify today, and we'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Haley Morris.

Good afternoon, Chair Henderson and members of the Committee on Health.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

My name is Haley Morris, and on behalf of Earth Funeral, one of the country's leading green funeral homes, I am here in strong support of the Green Death Care Option Amendment Act.

I was actually born here in Washington, DC and spent my childhood and early career here.

It means a great deal to be here today supporting legislation that resonates with families in DC during some of the most difficult moments of their lives.

At this core, this bill is about expanding options and honoring consumer choice.

For decades, Americans have had very limited options, primarily burial or cremation.

This legislation thoughtfully adds alkaline hydrolysis as an additional regulated option alongside those existing methods.

Consumers today expect more transparency, more personalization, and more alignment with their values, including environmental considerations.

This bill meets that moment.

I also want to briefly note that as the council considers expanding end-of-life options in DC, there are other emerging options like natural organic production, or commonly known as human composting.

Natural organic reduction, NOR is a safe and scientifically backed, respectful end-of-life option that gently transforms a body into nutrient-rich soil.

NOR is already legal in 14 states, including Maryland and Delaware, and reflects the same broader trend.

Many people are choosing NOR because they like the idea of their last act on Earth doing something good for the Earth.

Well, NOR is not the subject of this bill.

I do urge the council to uh look into it and potentially consider including it as well.

In conclusion, at the end of life, dignity means having options.

It means allowing individuals and families to make decisions that reflect their beliefs, their values, and their wishes.

This legislation does not replace existing options.

It simply empowers families with more of them.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Uh Amelia.

Good afternoon, Chair President Henderson, members of the committee.

My name is Amelia Kalma.

I'm the director of the books initiative at the DC Policy Center.

We're an independent nonpartisan think tank focused on policies that support a strong competitive economy in the district.

Two years ago, I testified in opposition to a new embalming license, and I'm back today because the underlying problem hasn't changed.

This bill creates new barriers to workforce participation without meaningful evidence that it improves safety or quality or access for district residents.

That failure is not unique to this legislation, but it reflects how occupational licensing operates across the country.

The research is pretty consistent.

Licensing requirements routinely raise prices for consumers, restrict employment opportunity, and produce little to no measurable improvement in service quality or public safety.

The funeral directors licensing reform amendment act creates a standalone embalmers license, a credential that already exists within the funeral director's license.

And it's our understanding that embalming is a core component of mortuary science curriculums.

So by meeting the education requirements for a funeral director, people already meet these embalming license requirements and are already ready to be like an embalmer as well.

So creating a second license for embalming means that to do the same job, someone has to file for multiple licenses, adding more administrative costs, more licensing fees, and more requirements to qualify.

The bill also raises the time training and costs required to enter the profession, mandating 2,000 hours of internship work.

And as other witnesses have mentioned, the reciprocity requirements are overly restrictive.

This fits in with studies of occupational licensing in general.

Um in the funeral industry specifically, licensing has been shown to contribute to increased prices and reduced workforce participation.

The burden doesn't necessarily fall equally either.

Research consistently shows that as occupations become more regulated, the share of workers who are women, black, and foreign-born Hispanic declines.

If this council's goal is to make it easier for DC residents to enter this profession, I think this bill moves in the wrong direction.

And so the district should decline to add another credential for embalmers and instead consider licensing reform and how it can better serve DC workers and the residents who rely on these services.

Thank you.

Thank you.

But I do see uh Sean.

Yes, can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Perfect.

Well, good afternoon.

Chair Anderson and the members of the committee.

My name is John Heath, and I'm here to testify on Bill 26547, the Green Death Care Option Act of 2025, specifically on alkaline hydrolysis.

I am a licensed funeral director from Minnesota with over 15 years experience providing alkaline hydrolysis.

I'm here today as a partner of Interra Green Burial in St.

Paul, Minnesota, an expert and advocate for water cremation to be authorized for funeral establishments in the District of Columbia.

We are seeing a massive shift in how families approach death care.

By 2029, the national cremation rate is expected to hit nearly 68%.

More importantly, 61% of consumers are now actively seeking environmentally sustainable options.

Public demand for a greener alternative to traditional flame cremation is no longer a niche interest.

It's the new standard.

Alkaline hydrolysis meets this demand by offering a significantly smaller carbon footprint.

While flame cremation relies on the intensive high heat combustion of fossil fuels, alkaline hydrolysis is powered by electricity.

The difference is staggering.

It uses only one tenth of the energy.

Unlike flame-based methods, this process is not emit harmful floral carbons, sulfur dioxides, or mercury into our atmosphere.

Instead, it fully contains mercury pollutants within the liquid byproduct or dental amalgam, keeping that out of the air we breathe and water we drink.

It's also incredibly effective at a clinical level, destroying infectious pathogens, creons, and even neutralizing chemotherapeutic drugs and formaldehyde.

From an operational standpoint, this technology is safer for our workers because we operate at a lower temperature, which is around 300 two degrees Fahrenheit compared to the 16 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit of flame cremation.

We don't have to surgically remove pacemakers or lithium battery pumps, which can explode in a flame crematory.

Regarding our infrastructure, the process is very manageable.

The agency of DC water would simply issue a conditional use permit to ensure discharge from the alkaline hydrolysis units meets national standards, just as we do in Minnesota through the Metropolitan Council.

In fact, the byproduct is rich in organic nitrogen and carbon, which is actually beneficial to water treatment microorganisms.

In some jurisdictions, these nutrients are even reclaimed and turned into fertilizer pellets.

In conclusion, passing the Green Death Care Option Act would provide the citizens of the District of Columbia with sophisticated echo-friendly choice that aligns with their values.

Thank you for your time in considering the future of the funeral industry.

Thank you, Sean.

I'll have some questions for you.

Sarah?

Good afternoon, Chair Henderson and members of the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of the Personal Health Data Security Amendment Act of 2025.

My name is Sarah Gagan, and I am senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, also known as EFIC.

Epic is an independent nonprofit research and advocacy center located here in Washington, D.C.

Epic was established in 1994 to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values in the information age.

Epic strongly supports the DC Council's critical effort to protect some of our most sensitive data, which is health data.

We commend the sponsors for crafting a bill that provides meaningful privacy protections for the district's residents' sensitive health data.

And I have four items I'd like to address.

First, protecting the sensitive information is critical.

Consumer health data collection has skyrocketed in recent years.

The broad availability and convenience of smartphones and internet access has enabled people to use search engines, chatbots, and apps to track and treat our health.

Our understanding of what constitutes health data has grown as analysts and data brokers have demonstrated their ability to infer health-related insights from a widening range of data sources.

For example, location data can become sensitive health data, like when GPS data indicates that someone has visited a methadone or abortion clinic.

Unbeknownst to many consumers, most of this health data collection is not protected by HIPAA, because most of the apps, platforms, and companies that collect our health data fall outside of HIPAA's narrow scope.

Second, the definition of personal health data is an important aspect of this bill.

The bill defines personal health data broadly and includes a non-exhaustive list of examples.

The expansive scope of health data and health-related inferences that can be drawn from data collection require an appropriately broad definition for this bill's protections to be effective.

Epic believes that this definition accurately captures health data across the online ecosystem and should not be narrowed.

Next, it is important that the bill includes a geofencing prohibition.

Under this bill, it is unlawful to establish geofenses to collect consumer health data around places where healthcare services are delivered.

This is important because location information can reveal our health status and conditions, and DC consumers should feel safe to seek health care without commercial surveillance, tracking their every move.

Lastly, Epic strongly urges the council to remove the notice and choice provisions that in the bill that tie limitations on data collection and use to language contained in privacy policies.

Unfortunately, the notice and choice approach to privacy regulations simply does not work.

The phone focus on notice has led to longer and more complicated privacy policies that users do not read and could not change even if they did.

Instead, businesses' obligations should be tied to the purpose for which data is collected, rather than whatever companies allow in their own privacy policies.

Transitioning away from the notice and choice framework and towards data minimization also takes the burden off individual people to protect their personal data and instead requires companies to be responsible handlers of the data that they collect.

Thank you for your time today.

Thank you.

Thank you so much to this panel of witnesses.

I have a few questions.

So Ms.

Morris or Mr.

Heath, I wanted you guys are the only ones who have testified thus far on the green death option legislation.

So I do have some questions that I I wanted to ask.

Let me start.

Okay.

If a jurisdiction is starting from a limited death care infrastructure, and by limited, I mean limited in terms of options.

Which green disposition methods are typically most feasible to implement first?

That's either Haley or Sean.

I'm happy to I'm happy to jump in and then Sean will turn it over to you as well.

I would say that the two most common expansions would be alkaline hydrolysis and NOR.

And a lot of times states will actually legalize both of them at the same time, which is why I mentioned NOR as well.

Okay.

What does that stand for again?

Sorry, that's natural organic reduction or human composting.

Okay.

In terms of alkaline hydrolysis, can you either of you talk a little bit about disposal of the water after the fact?

Like what does the cleanup look like after the fact?

I'm going to defer to Sean as the practitioner on that one.

Okay.

Sean, if if you're speaking, you're on mute.

Sean, are you still with us?

There we go.

Okay, there you go.

Okay.

So with regards to the liquid byproduct, which is called the Fluent, everything uh it goes directly into the municipal wastewater system.

So from there, it is then treated at the local wastewater plant.

And actually helpful to the other microorganisms at the wastewater treatment plant and is uh treated and reclaimed and returned back into the drinking water system.

Okay.

How long did it take um to get everything off the ground in Minnesota?

It took a few years.

So Minnesota passed alkaline hydrolysis in 2006, but it was 2008 before the first unit was installed in uh at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, which I was uh there to be a part of.

And so um initially the legislation was very closely to mirror cremation just to get things going, but then was uh amended later on because there were definitely some differences there.

So uh there was just a lot of work with the um water agencies to to make sure that what was going into the municipal system was not of any concern.

And to be very honest with you, um the small amount of affluent that goes into the system is is often offset by the millions of gallons of water produced by other entities and uh residences within the area.

So they most of the time they couldn't even tell when the machine was running.

Okay.

All right.

Um I don't have any further questions for this panel.

Um if you could make sure to please provide your written testimony for the record, that would be incredibly helpful.

Thank you all.

Could I just add one other one other small consideration for for you and the committee?

Sure.

Which is just that um one of the things one I think just an additional consideration to have as you're evaluating uh expanding end-of-life options like this, is that families in DC are actually already choosing them.

So even though um you know alkaline hydrolysis or human composting might not be legal in terms of facility performing those options in DC proper, families can opt to have their loved ones um have this as their end of life option, and unfortunately just puts the burden then on the family to have to transport their loved one you know out of the district or you know, sometimes even across the country in order to fulfill that wish.

Um that's why I do think it's very important to um be honoring consumer choice.

Um, so that's why I do think it's very important to be honoring consumer choice, and I and I again I really appreciate your time and consideration in evaluating this.

Great.

Thank you.

Um thank you all so much.

We're gonna turn to our government witnesses.

Um we're gonna start um with our witnesses from the Office of the Attorney General, and then we'll um go uh to the next one after that.

So Lindsay Marks from the Office of the Attorney General and Kevin Vermillion, also from the Office of the Attorney General.

Hello.

Good afternoon.

Okay, uh, before you guys begin.

I have to swear you in.

So if you can raise your right hand.

Do you swear or affirm under penalty of law that the testimony you're about to provide to the council of the District of Columbia and this committee is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I do.

I do.

Great.

All right.

Are you are you both presenting testimony or just one?

Just Ms.

Marks, I'll answer questions.

Sounds good.

All right, when you're ready.

Uh good afternoon, Chairperson Henderson, council members, and residents of the district.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the Personal Health Data Security Amendment Act of 2025.

My name is Lindsay Marks, and I'm an assistant attorney general in the Office of Consumer Protection at the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia.

OAG enforces the district's consumer protection laws and works to ensure that consumers remain protected in the digital era, including by bringing actions to protect consumers' privacy and by enforcing DC's consumer security breach notification law.

I handle a large part of the office's privacy work, and I am a certified information privacy professional under the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

Although OAG supports the goals of the Personal Health Data Security Act, we propose several recommendations to further enhance the health data privacy protections for district residents.

As a society, we have stumbled into a world where our most banal and intimate activities are tracked, collected, stored, aggregated, and analyzed.

Due to a lack of federal regulations, companies are collecting troves of sensitive information about us, including information about our mental health, sexual orientation, prescription medications, health conditions, and our precise location.

Ubiquitous tools like wearables that track your health data, wellness and meditation applications, and sleep trackers frequently operate outside of federal regulatory structures.

While some of this collection is done with our consent and can be helpful, data can help us learn about our health and track our habits, and it can fuel research and innovative treatments.

Collection without regulation or consent can also be detrimental.

Our sensitive health information is valuable, and once that data is collected, we have little control over how it is used, with whom it is shared and for what purposes, and when and to whom it is sold.

Disturbingly, our sensitive health information is often collected, shared, and sold to third parties in the open market without our knowledge or consent.

Each data point or individual piece of information about us, possibly innocuous on its own, can have unexpected and powerful ramifications when connected with additional data points about us and subjected to advanced data analytics.

Without a comprehensive federal privacy bill, many states have stepped in to protect their residents.

Nineteen states, including our neighboring jurisdictions of Virginia and Maryland, have passed comprehensive privacy bills.

Others, such as Washington, have passed sectoral privacy laws aimed at protecting residents' most sensitive data, including health data.

These laws were designed to respond to the harm posed by countless data breaches, as well as the mass exploitation of personal information by the private sector, including by limiting the unnecessary collection and retention of personal information and the sharing and selling of personal information without knowledge or consent.

While we have the benefit of learning from the experiences of other jurisdictions, we are also falling behind.

Without similar legislation, district residents have less rights to control what is done with their personal information and are more vulnerable to their highly sensitive personal information being misused.

The need for privacy legislation is clear.

Consumers have grown increasingly concerned about what businesses are doing with their data while simultaneously not understanding it and feeling powerless to control it.

Many people mistakenly believe that all health information is covered by HIPAA and must be protected, but that is not the case.

OAG is pleased to see the council tackle this complex and important issue.

The bill would provide a legal framework to begin to close the gap in expectations.

There are several provisions in this bill that would empower district residents to take control over how their personal health data is collected and used.

For example, the bill gives district residents the ability to choose whether they want their health information to be collected, shared, or sold.

Additionally, it gives residents the right to find out what health information a controller has collected, who it has been shared with, and to request that their health information be deleted.

It also allows district residents to seek medical care without fear that they are being tracked.

These are all rights that district residents currently lack, and OAG applauds the council for recognizing how fundamental these rights are in today's society.

The bill also places requirements on controllers by requiring them to maintain a privacy policy that clearly tells district residents what information they are collecting, how that information is used, and who the information is shared with and for what purpose.

OAG applauds the council for requiring that these policies be made publicly available so that district residents can make informed choices about what health apps and trackers to use.

Notably, the bill's robust enforcement mechanisms empower OAG to seek penalties of up to $10,000 for each violation of the bill.

This strong penalty provision will serve as a deterrent, motivating businesses to invest resources to comply with the law.

Although OAG supports the goals of the bill, we have several recommendations that would bolster the bill's protections for district residents.

First, we recommend that the committee move away from the bill's notice and consent requirements, which put the onus on district residents to understand data privacy and to take actions to protect themselves towards provisions that delineate specific permissible processing activities that align with the district residents' expectations.

This recommendation is in line with Maryland's comprehensive data privacy law, which limits controllers from collecting, processing or sharing consumer health data except when necessary to provide a product or service requested by a consumer and bans the sale of consumer health data in all circumstances.

This would protect district residents without them having to take any action.

Second, to enable OAG to effectively monitor compliance, we recommend including a provision to require controllers not only to maintain internal records of all deletion requests, but on a quarterly basis, provide OAG with the summary of the deletion requests the controller received and how they were handled.

This would allow OAG to manage your compliance with the law and identify outliers who are not complying.

Third, we recommend adding definitions for consent, person and clear and conspicuous, and we recommend changing the language in some of the bill's definitions, including data subject, controller, and personal health data.

These changes would remove ambiguities, help ensure the bill clearly addresses the rights and protections it sets forth, and exempt the district and federal governments and limit compliance requirements for small businesses.

Explanations for each of these recommendations are set forth in my written testimony.

OAG welcomes the opportunity to work with the committee on defining these terms in a way that is consistent with the purpose and goals of the bill.

Finally, OAG strongly recommends changing the enforcement structure of the bill to make a violation of this bill a per se violation of the CPPA.

This is in line with how other consumer protection statutes are enforced, including the district's consumer security breach notification law, debt collection law, and student loan borrower bill of rights.

The CPPA provides a clear framework for enforcement and years of interpretive case law that would ensure OAG is able to promptly enforce the law against bad actors.

In sum, OAG is grateful to Councilmember Henderson and this committee for addressing this complex issue and advancing this important legislation.

In addition to our recommendations noted in this testimony, we also have recommended changes in additions to the bill relating to the timeline and process by which a resident can confirm whether the data is being processed or request that their data be deleted on agreements between third parties and controllers and exemptions when the bill should not apply.

These changes are reflected in a red line of the bill that we would like to send to the committee.

We stand ready to work with the committee to further enhance the bill to protect district residents' personal health information.

And I'm available to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much, Ms.

Marks.

And we'll jump right in.

And of course, if any of my colleagues join, we'll certainly welcome them in as well.

I first wanted to start with just trying to get an understanding of the current landscape that you all deal with in the consumer private consumer protection unit.

How often do you all get cases related to data privacy at this stage in the game?

So with without a comprehensive data protection or data privacy law, either federally or just for the district, we bring all privacy cases under the Consumer Protection Procedures Act or the CPPA.

And so we are quite limited in what we can actually bring.

So we can bring cases where a business has misrepresented what data they're collecting or what they're doing with that data.

Or if a business has unfairly tricked consumers into providing data.

Okay.

So if you were going to do a particular investigation of data privacy related, how long does that type of investigation how long could it take?

So I don't I don't think that data privacy is inherently different than any of our other investigations.

Okay.

Which is based on the complexity of the case can take anywhere from a few months to investigate upwards of a year.

Okay.

Are there any trends that you all have observed with regard to data privacy?

So again, since we're in enforcing under the CPPA, a trend that we have noticed is that businesses, especially large businesses, have gotten better about putting their practices in their privacy policies.

Which in theory is good because somewhere buried in a long document is what they're actually doing.

But from our perspective, when we can only bring cases when they're misrepresenting their practices, it makes it more difficult.

Yeah, I guess the question then is like, yes, you had it, but it was in a 20-page document, and did the consumer actually read it when they provided consent.

So consent is not currently required.

So it would it would mostly just be whether they misled consumers previously.

Oh, I see, because they would say, oh no, we wrote and said what we were going to do.

Well, it while like the information is out there, it's sort of a legal fiction that consumers understand it.

Okay.

Um so would you say probably one of the biggest challenges that you all have had with these types of cases is the limitations under the existing CCPA C PPA.

That's right, yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Um I mean, I think that speaks to a little bit of where we are.

What were your thoughts on the testimony we heard from earlier where we had several witnesses who have said we shouldn't necessarily just focus on um health data, but that an omnibus approach would be better.

So I mean, we would be happy to work with the council to create a more comprehensive bill.

Um, what we have today is the a bill that protects health data, and uh that is one of the most sensitive categories of data that um needs protection.

And so we were just like trying to go through the matrix and just trying to understand, right?

Like if if somebody were to introduce a comprehensive bill.

It probably could referred in part to the judiciary committee because it would involve you all in the office of the attorney general.

It might get a referral in part to if there were a committee on business and economic development because it would be related to businesses.

Then I could see a situation where the committee of the whole is like breaking off a piece because of their part.

If it included health, then it would come to us.

Like that's like a five committee referral, um, which sure we could advocate with the chairman for something simpler, but like everyone thinks that omnibuses are cute, but actually omnibus, I personally don't like them for a variety of different reasons, but the biggest being that so much gets stuffed into it that nobody's paying attention to the details in some cases when you have lots of very large pieces of legislation um being smooshed together.

But the biggest being that so much gets stuffed into it that nobody's paying attention to the details in some cases when you have lots of very large pieces of legislation um being smooshed together.

Um anyway, we have what we have today before us, and um yeah.

Okay.

Um let me ask about private right of action.

So 18 states rely solely on their attorney general for enforcement.

Some allow for limited claims, um, Massachusetts and Illinois.

Um in Washington state, they provide the broadest private right of action.

Um do you all have thoughts in terms of which road the district should take?

Or not.

We we think that the district should have a private right of action.

And part of that is why we think that the council should make clear that a violation of the statute is a violation of the CPPA, which already has a private right of action.

Okay.

Which which has been quite successful in the district and the council as it is amended the CPPA over the years, has actually expanded that private right of action.

Um the reason that is important to our office is because no matter how many resources you were to give us, we can't go after every violation of consumer protection laws and especially um data privacy um violations.

And so giving things like public interest organizations the ability to bring CPPA cases for violations of the data health data privacy laws really expands our ability to practice uh to protect consumers in those cases that we just can't take on and allows things like public interest organizations or nonprofits to tap into things like funding for experts or other things, because as Ms.

Marks can tell you, these data privacy investigations can often be very technical and have some costs.

So having an expanded private right of action really is been successful in protecting DC consumers and other areas, and we think it would be so here as well.

Okay.

Um in terms of uh rights of privacy and for subjects, um, our legislation gives DC residents the right to be provided with confirmation on whether their health data is being collected.

It also gives residents the right to have their health data deleted by controllers within 180 days of the deletion request and 120 days for third party and processors.

There was testimony earlier today from the ACOU that was saying that's too long and that we should um shorten that to 45 days.

Um do you all have any thoughts on that?

Um we agree and would recommend a 45-day timeline, which is also consistent with Maryland, Virginia and most other states.

Okay.

In some cases, consistency is good.

Um legislation also gives data or gives consumers the right to withdraw consent that was once given in terms of processing personal health data.

What is your reaction to this provision?

And should the language be proscriptive or non-proscriptive?

And it would say for context for the for the public for folks, right?

Let's say you signed up for an app in your 20s.

Um now you're in your 30s.

Do they still get the right to keep that data?

Or can you go back and say, no, no, I I'm done.

I I'm good, please delete, move on.

Um so that's what we're sort of thinking about here, particularly from a health perspective.

Um sometimes you give your health data at different seasons of your life, um, and then you get wiser and you're like, no, no, that wasn't a great idea.

Um while our office recommends moving away from a notice and consent framework, um, to the extent that the council moves forward with that.

We definitely agree that there should be an option um for consumers to both request that their data be deleted and also to withdraw consent and to outline and that the bill should include a process um by which a consumer does that.

Okay.

Um let's talk about geofencing.

The bill bans geofencing within 2,000 feet of healthcare facilities.

Um, but many business owners simply place a virtual circle over the coordinates and unintentionally capture sometimes hospitals and health clinics.

So let's say I'm uh name uh pro I'm a retail store and I'm next door to a health clinic.

I have particular geofencing.

Um, but because I put the radius over my little area, now I'm picking up the health clinic, even though that's not my intent.

Is there ways of which we could craft this to do what we intend without having unintended consequences?

Well, I think that is a concern.

I would say that the bill as drafted is fairly consistent with other states who have included these, including Connecticut, New York, and Washington.

And I think that is a trade-off that if you're going to protect residents who are going to a hospital from geofencing, then maybe the McDonald's next door loses some of their ability to geofense.

Yeah.

I would say for people who are watching consumers, would you dig further into this issue of geofencing?

A lot of companies use it who you don't suspect.

And you can also test sort of the theory.

So for instance, um this is happening with like I walk past a particular store for whom I might have their app, but I haven't been or I haven't bought anything in a while.

But walking past the store, all of a sudden, by the time I get to the corner, I've received either a text message or some other type of pop-up notice.

It's like, hey, there's a sale going on.

Which is a little bit creepy if you think about it, because you're literally just walking for your everyday.

You don't realize that the app that you have on your phone is now pinging in that way.

And so yeah, you're getting served ads simply by just walking by the store and they're already having your information.

Um, which is a little if you it gives a bit brother when you think about it a little too far.

But you're saying that the language that we have here doesn't seem any um more extreme than the other jurisdictions.

No, I think that's right.

I I I think I believe Connecticut has approximately 1,750 feet, New York has 1,850.

Okay.

Um and Washington has a 2,000 feet radius.

Okay.

Um you all are doing, or well, let me ask this.

Does the consumer protection unit currently have staff with the technical expertise to investigate geofencing and location-based advertising practices, or is that something you guys would contract out for?

So we we have attorneys that have Lindsay in particular experience with the legal concepts around here, but if we have like need for like technical expertise, we don't have in-house technologists or experts, and that's something that we have different resources we could go to, whether that is hiring experts or there are certain organizations that provide state attorney generals offices with some technical expertise that we can tap into.

Okay.

What about in those jurisdictions that are kind of similar to ours in that technically you could be standing in the District of Columbia, but the geofense radius would stretch into Coma Park, Maryland, or vice versa.

How do those types of situations work?

That's a good question.

Um I think I'll have to give back to you on the answer.

Okay.

I mean, that was just something that we're sort of thinking about from the perspective of like Yeah, you could be standing at the metro technically in DC, but your geofense could pick up within Maryland or or vice versa, or the other way around.

And I don't know that every jurisdiction has to deal with those sort of close proximities of lines, but it's just something that we were sort of thinking about under that.

Um the consumer health privacy protection amendment act of 2024, so Chippa, um, included a section identifying specific categories of data that would be excluded from the scope of the law, such as HIPAA protected information and so forth.

Um the committee consider restoring that section.

Well, I can't speak to every exemption that was included in HIPAA.

I do think that's it makes sense to include some with this bills, certainly um data that is already under a HIPAA regulation requiring, for example, a covered entities under HIPAA, like a hospital or a doctor's office to have to comply with another regime might be overly burdensome.

And I believe all legislation has excluded um HIPAA protected um health information.

Okay, what about FERPA, which would be educational and we um met with the consortium of universities and they wanted univers higher education universities to be excluded.

Now I'm a bit a little weary on that.

There are definitely parts on the geofencing, okay, sure, your health clinic.

Your school, your student health clinic is a little bit different than something else.

But I also know that a trend we've seen in lots of universities on higher ed is that they are contracting out student health services to other private entities to do that work.

So it's not the university that's the entity, it's somebody else who's the entity.

Um which may not always be clear to students and families.

But I don't know if you guys have given that thought.

Yeah, as far as other exemptions, I I agree with you that um some level of h hesitation or um given that the rights under different laws um such as the educational right are not the same as here.

Um and that a district resident should retain those rights um to delete to request that their information be deleted, for example.

Okay.

All right.

Um so under Connecticut's law, um, their data privacy act, they require that the attorney general issue enforcement report detailing compliant um volume and common violations such as inadequate disclosures or missing opt-out options.

Would OAG find value in issuing that same report or no?

I know.

Reports give you all more work.

So I'm asking the question.

So I think what we would find the most value in is getting the data reported to us.

And that was one of the suggestions in the testimonies requiring um uh But from whom?

From the um people that have the deletion requests.

Um what's the term?

So yeah, the bill has a um a provision that uh controllers have to um collect and track um their data requests and how they're handled.

Um and one of our recommendations was that that information be sent to our office.

Um as far as affirmatively creating a report.

Um I don't I don't think we've thought about that, but like we wouldn't even be able to do that without getting that information right now.

Right, because where would you get the source material for the report?

See, I see your point.

Okay.

No, everybody always tries to get out of annual reporting.

But I also don't like to create work.

That is gonna be meaningless.

So okay.

Um in terms of implementation of this type of of a bill like this, what would the division of labor be between Office of Attorney General, DC Health, and maybe uh Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection?

Like if I understand correctly, right now the bill just gives us sole um enforcement authority.

So as as it's written right now, it would just be us enforcing it.

And you would collaborate with those other agencies, yes?

Well, we often we often do collaborate with DLCP, especially um because they are also a source of consumer complaints.

So just generally we're talking to DLCP about trends and complaints that they're receiving and they're telling us the same thing to like compare information um so that we can best use our resources and so we meet on a regular basis to discuss those things.

And I'm certain that we would be be discussing this as well with the LCP.

Okay, would you also be the entity responsible for notification of the law and its rules?

So to the covered entities included.

So I'm I'm I'm not sure what you mean by notification of the law, but like if there is rulemaking under this um, then likely, yes, we would have the rulemaking um power.

And I think as drafted right now, the the rulemaking um ability is is with OAG.

Okay.

Hold on one second.

All right.

Uh is there anything we haven't asked you that you went to say for the record?

No.

Okay, awesome.

Well, oh, I said thank you.

Oh, well, thank you.

Um thank you guys for being here.

Um we'll certainly follow up with you all as we um think about what this looks like going forward, and um we appreciate your testimony today.

Thank you so much.

Um we're just gonna take a really quick five-minute break and then um we'll come back and discuss the other remaining pieces of legislation.

Yeah, I don't think I'll think we can also take that.

I mean short people.

Okay, we're back.

Now we're gonna call the government witnesses for Bill 26-47 and Bill 26-547.

We have Mr.

John McGuire, who's the chair of the Board of Funeral Directors, and Tiffany Crow, who is the director of the district's department of licensing and consumer protection.

Before we begin, I do need to swear you both in, if that's okay.

So if you can embrace your right hand.

Do you swear or affirm under penalty of law that the testimony you're about to provide to the Council of the District of Columbia and this committee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

Great.

Okay.

Um why don't we start with Director Crowe?

Okay.

Um Mr.

McGuire's testimony gives a little bit of an intro to the board.

Is it okay if he's a good question?

Oh, sure.

That's it's brief.

It's however you all want to.

It's very brief.

Okay.

Good afternoon, Chairperson Henderson and members and staff of the Committee on Health.

I'm John McGuire, Chairperson of the District of Columbia Board of Funeral Directors.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of uh Mayor Miro Bowser's today's hearing to discuss the activities and accomplishments of the board in physical year 2025 and FY 2026 to date.

I would like to begin by thanking Mayor Bowser for reimporting me to the board in 2023.

I have the privilege of serving as chairman, as we have said.

During my time on the board, my fellow board members and I have had opportunity to influence the district's funeral industry.

The funeral establishment industry has changed significantly during my tenure on the board, and it continues to do so uh today and to evolve.

The two bills before the committee today, the funeral director licensing reform amendment act of twenty twenty-five and the Green Death Care Options Amendment Act of Twenty Twenty-Five are indicative of this.

We are excited to play a role in shaping the future of the district's funeral industry while also protecting residents and consumers.

The Board of Funeral Directors' mission is to protect the public safety of public health and welfare of the district residents and consumers.

We achieve this by determining initial eligibility and renewal licensure requirements, continually monitoring standards, trends, and developments within the funeral service, recommending legislative and regulatory amendments as needed, and receiving complaints against licensees and taking appropriate disciplinary action.

There are five positions on the board, four uh licensed funeral directors and one consumer member.

The uh other board members are Ernest Boykin, who's a consumer member, Randolph Horton, who is a uh funeral director member, and Casey Martin, who is also a funeral director member.

Uh currently there is one funeral director vacancy on the board, which the mayor's office of talent and appointments is working to fill.

The board meets on the first Thursday of the month, except in August at 1 p.m.

via the Zoom platform.

The board could not fulfill its responsibilities without the dedicated support it receives from the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection.

Four DLCP staff members, including an attorney, are dedicated to the board.

The board issues four types of licenses.

Less well known on the funeral director apprentice license and the surviving spouse or state license.

To obtain a funeral director's license in the district, one must fulfill an apprenticeship requirement.

A licensed funeral director apprentice is directly supervised by a licensed funeral director.

And during their internship, applicants must have embalmed at least 25 human remains and conducted at least 25 funerals.

At the conclusion of the apprenticeship, the applicant must provide a signed statement from each funeral director they worked with, verifying they satisfy the requirements.

And I might also add that before licensure, they must also take a DC law exam and also a practical examination.

In addition to the funeral director's apprentice license, the board approves surviving spouse and estate licenses.

These licenses allow the surviving spouse or representative of an estate to operate a funeral service establishment upon the death of a funeral director licensed to operate that establishment.

The surviving spouse or representative must identify a licensed funeral director to manage the day-to-day operations of the establishment.

As long as the surviving spouse does not remarry, the license will remain valid.

Conversely, the estate's license is valid for only three years after the funeral director's death.

In addition to approving licenses and regulating the funeral services industry, the board also handles complaints of against licensees.

If one of the complaints against the licensee, if one makes wishes to make a complaint against the licensee, they may submit a complaint to the board on DLCP's website.

Once received, the complaint is assigned to an investigator in DLCP's consumer protection unit.

Upon completion of the investigation, the report is presented to the board for review and possible disciplinary action.

The board has broad enforcement authority, including the ability to issue civil fines, suspend or revoke licenses, and issue cease and desist orders.

In addition to a licensure and complaint enforcement responsibilities, community outreach, outreach, education, and engagement of major functions of the board.

In collaboration with DLCP, the Board has updated its website to provide more information about the licensing process, how to file complaints, and how to attend board meetings.

We also share pertinent information about what is taking place in the funeral industry in DLCP's monthly external newsletter.

In FY 2026, the board plans to publish its first newsletter.

In addition to its external publications, the board hosted its annual funeral directors practitioner forum in 2025.

The forum included a variety of topics, including the legal update and overview of the complaint process.

Attendees were able to earn three hours of continuing education credits.

We have also participated in events where we have an opportunity to talk to students about careers in funeral service.

Finally, in February 2025, the Board attended the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Board's 121st meeting, which allowed us to learn the latest in funeral industry and to learn from colleagues across the country.

During FY 2025, the Board continued to monitor legislative and regulatory trends across the country to determine what reforms may be needed in the district.

We also monitored the bills before the committee today and look forward to discussing them as we believe they will provide additional opportunities to those seeking to enter funeral service and provide funeral services establishments and families with more options.

As active members in local, regional, and national organizations, we will continue monitoring legislative and regulation trends as well as the district's current licensing regulations.

The Board will continue to dutifully carry out its responsibility of protecting the public interest and welfare by upholding the letter and spirit of the district's licensing law concerning funeral directors, funeral director apprentices, and funeral service establishments.

We appreciate the opportunity to share our accomplishments and future plans.

We look forward to working with you in the committee.

This concludes my testimony, and I welcome any questions the committee might have.

Thank you.

Director Crow.

Thank you so much, Chairperson McGuire.

We are happy to appear before the committee this afternoon to discuss B26-47, the Funeral Director's Licensing Reform Amendment Act of 2025, and B 26-547, the Green Care Option Amendment Act of 2025.

DLCP oversees nine boards and commissions, including the Board of Funeral Directors.

DLCP and the Board generally support the intent of both bills, which we believe would increase opportunities for funeral licensed professionals and their families.

We have few recommendations for and clarifying questions that we would like for the committee to consider.

We believe that our concerns can be addressed by working with the committee during markup.

I will address the more substantive items in my testimony, beginning with B 26-4-7, Funeral Directors Licensing Reform Amendment Act of 2025.

The Funeral Director's Licensing Reform Amendment Act of 2025 would create new licensing and employment opportunities within the funeral industry.

Specifically, the legislation would amend the licensing requirements for a funeral director by A, removing the high school graduate or GED requirement, B, revising the education requirements for those who have graduated from a school of mortuary science or funeral services, or who have obtained an associate's degree or its equivalent.

And C replacing the funeral director apprenticeship requirement with a funeral director internship.

We see these as small items that we may have minor adjustments to.

Additionally, B26-47 would create a new embalmer's license and amend the definition of practice of funeral services and add a new term and definition, funeral services.

Further, the bill would replace the existing funeral director apprentice license with a certification as funeral director intern or embalmer intern.

Lastly, B26-47 would make technical amendments to the District of Columbia Funeral Services Regulatory Act of 1984.

While we support the intent of the legislation, which is to create economic opportunities for those seeking to become licensed to practice in the funeral industry, we have committed to identifying ways to update these regulations and make them fit our current state.

We have also been steadfast in our commitment to ensuring that our laws and regulations are current and align with national trends.

So as drafted, this aligns with our goals, and we have a few recommendations.

We generally support the goal of amending the requirements for obtaining a funeral director's license.

For example, we support the council's intent to revise the education requirements for those who have graduated from a school of mortuary science or funeral services.

Presently, the law provides that the applicant's coursework from an accredited school or college or funeral services whose course instruction is not less than 12 months or composed of not less than a hundred and eight hundred and forty hours of study.

The bill's revision will allow more graduates of these programs to obtain a funeral director's license.

We also support the council's clarifying the minimum course of study for those who complete an associate's degree.

By requiring a minimum of 60 credit hours of coursework, of which at least 30 hours shall be in funeral directing, the bill will ensure graduates have the foundation they need to perform funeral directing services.

We do recommend that the council retain the high school diploma or GED as a requirement for licensure.

It is currently not clear whether the council intended to remove the high school diploma or equivalent from the code.

One could assume that the applicant has a high school diploma or GED if they have graduated from a school or college of mortuary science or obtain their associate's degree.

Additionally, creating new licensing opportunities is a goal that the council, DLCP, the mayor, and the board share.

However, as drafted, the bill would limit funeral directors and their licensure.

We recommend that the council amend the bill to allow the holder of a funeral director's license to offer both funeral directing services and embalmings while retaining the embalming license.

This is similar to other states' practices such as Maryland and New York that have combination licenses.

Further, to support expanded pathways to licensure, we recommend the council include a provision that would allow the holder of an embalmer license to obtain a funeral director license provided that they satisfy the licensing requirements.

In short, we want to simplify the scheme while offering more opportunities.

Finally, B26-47 would replace the funeral director apprenticeship license with the funeral director intern and embalmer intern certificates.

Rather than create two separate internship programs, we recommend a single program that would require an embalmer intern to be directly supervised by a licensed funeral director or licensed embalmer and a funeral director intern to be directly supervised by a licensed funeral director.

Currently, the bill does not specify whether the intern should be enrolled in a school or college of mortuary science or in an associate's degree program, or if the intern must have graduated from either of these programs.

We recommend the bill be amended to include this requirement as it currently exists in the law.

Lastly, the bill would require that the intern and supervising funeral director or embalmer to provide the board with a report after completing a thousand hours of training.

The bill would require the intern to complete 2,000 training hours within two years, which may be extended up to five years.

As such, the intern and licensee would submit at least two reports to the board during the duration of the internship.

And so we recommend instead of this requirement that they submit one report at the conclusion of the internship.

So a small change, but uh meaningful for the for the interns.

In addition, we have a few recommendations related to oversight, compliance, and enforcement for your consideration.

We have submitted those to the record.

Um and so at this stage, I'll thank you for allowing me to testify and happy to answer any questions you have about anything in the testimony or the questions.

Awesome.

Okay, well, thank you so much.

Um I'm gonna start with questions on the bills, and then we'll turn to questions about the board's um work in general.

Uh I'm gonna start with the embalmers license.

So 31 jurisdictions uh separately licensed funeral directors and embalmers.

And um while there was one person who testified earlier today who thought that that would be overly burdens, um, it feels like that is the direction that the industry seems to be moving in, which I frankly think probably at least my you know general understanding of it would actually open up the profession to more people who may not want to do the funeral director work but really enjoy the science behind the embalming piece.

Chairperson McGuire can speak to the industry side of things from the regulatory side.

Our goal is just to make sure that it's clear.

We have so many convoluted regulations now and different types of licenses that we would want to make sure that whatever is drafted is clear and doesn't actually add to the confusion of practitioners.

Okay.

It's it's the uh board's um thought that there should be three licenses.

Okay.

The funeral director, the embalmer, and the combination license.

Okay.

Which is similar to Maryland and Virginia.

All right.

Although Maryland for the combination license, Maryland uh calls it a mortician's license.

And in Virginia, it's called a funeral service license.

Do you have a preference of whose adventure we choose?

I don't think the board uh well, the board hasn't talked about a preference on the on the term.

Okay.

All right.

Um so that's just three there.

Obviously, there would still be the apprentice license and then um the others there.

Okay.

Um there agencies pre-hearing responses.

Currently, the board has one staff person who is responsible for processing the applications.

Is there any concern that by adding an embalmer's license that that would increase the workload?

Yes, it will.

I I think anything we do here will increase the workload, but that doesn't mean that it's not a valuable change.

I think we need to make sure one, that everyone on the staff of our occupational professional licensing teams can handle almost any kind of license, but also that we evaluate the likely volume and the impact that we'll have on both the board and our staff.

Okay.

Um the bill as drafted and just say for I don't think I said it at the beginning.

It was introduced by Chairman Mendelssohn, so not by me.

So I'm taking a prox someone else wrote.

Um the bill would allow a person who is currently licensed as a funeral director prior to the effective date of the legislation to receive an embalmer's license automatically.

Um I guess we're going with the assumption that anybody who is currently a funeral director licensee has already demonstrated competency for embalming.

That's correct.

That's correct.

That's correct.

Okay.

All right.

Um there any additional issues that separating the licenses would solve for in so um, you know.

We're just trying to get some background in terms of why now?

Why separate now?

What are some of the challenges to just having the the single license?

I think um probably Mr.

Nelson um uh summed it up in that there are evidently folks out there who um want to be funeral directors and not embalmers, those who want to be embalmers and not funeral directors, those who um have um the talent to be an embalmer, but maybe not the personality to be a funeral director.

Um that's accurate.

And and other states seem to have um made the transition.

Uh hopefully will bring more people into funeral service so that they can specialize in one or the other.

And those who want to do both, as I said, if we have that combination license, um, they're free to do both.

Um maybe they they their their interests are in doing both sides, arts and science.

So I really some people may think that there is a drawback in splitting them.

But the board does not have that opinion.

Okay.

Can I ask about the um change in terminology that is proposed?

Um right now we have apprenticeship.

In my mind, apprenticeship is a step above an internship, but the proposed legislation would refer to it back as an internship again as opposed to an apprenticeship.

I think in all the other jurisdictions that we have seen, they call it an apprenticeship as well.

Do you all have a preference on an intern versus an apprentice?

No.

The um sorry you can have to lean in, Mr.

McGuire, because we they can't hear you on the mic.

Oh, all right, I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Um The Board doesn't have a position on that.

Um there are a number of jurisdictions that do have interns now and not apprentices.

I guess the real solution is to look up the Webster's dictionary of the two, and whichever one fits best is the one we should use.

Okay.

I mean we do that sometimes.

So we didn't specifically call this out in our testimony.

I think ours focused primarily on the hours requirement based on what we heard.

But the whatever we do should be consistent across, right?

Like you, the council and the district do a lot with apprenticeships already.

So there are some benefits in terms of funding and support that come along with an apprenticeship program.

Yeah, the federal funding is less formal intern type funding.

So my preference would be apprenticeship.

We didn't call it out here.

We can edit our testimony to uh make that um applicable.

And then if to Mr.

McGuire's point, there are definitional things that have to be done to make it qualify for an apprenticeship and is to the benefit of the profession and those seeking to be in the profession will will make some suggestions.

Well, I mean, on its face, in terms of the basic definition of apprenticeship, at least my understanding, right?

A certain number of hours needing to be completed while you're working under the supervision of someone who is licensed that that gives apprentice to me that does not give intern.

Um especially since the whole point of it is to work towards your own licensure, which internship is more of a in some cases it could be just exploration.

Do I like this or not?

But you don't you don't necessarily have to go down that path.

And also to even start down the path of apprenticeship, you have to have a certain amount of education.

So yes.

Okay.

And I and that might be actually, and we didn't check with the initial drafters about why they're trying to change the terminology.

Maybe that barrier to entry piece is part of it.

We're happy to work with the committee and others to figure out what the best solution is, but I think apprenticeship gives it a little bit more of a you know yeah.

No, I I agree.

Let's let's talk about the hours part.

So um Virginia currently requires two thousand hours of practical training.

Maryland only requires a thousand hours of working hours.

Um Why should the district change our requirement to match Virginia's?

The board did not the board did not write the um bill as it as it currently stands.

I think I think the 2,000 came from I was on the impression that Maryland required 2,000.

Um but I may be wrong.

Um 2,000 hours at full-time status would be a year worth of work.

Yep.

Um on the current regulation, there is no um amount of time needed to um grant get get your um license grant.

So right now under DC, you have had to be licensed, you um well, I guess this is as a funeral director.

Um you have you have to have at least two years of practical experience as an apprentice funeral director.

So if if you have a certificate and not an associate degree with an associate degree, you already have a Right.

If you have associates degree, it could it be one year.

But but the uh other than the duration of the license, the apprentice license is good for four years.

So you have that four years to complete requirements on the current regulations.

Okay.

Are generally apprentices paid?

Yes.

Okay.

So they're employees.

Yeah.

You're serving under the supervision and you have so many um.

What is it?

Embalmed at least 25 remains and then um directed at least 25 funerals.

Okay.

Um do we get currently receive a lot of applications for apprentices to extend their timeline?

So you said right now you have four years.

Do we often get people who say I need more time?

From my memory, I can only think of one in the last ten years.

Okay.

I mean, four years seems generous to me, but that also you don't control the volume.

Yep.

So yeah, okay, got it.

Um is right now anyone who is licensed as a funeral director, are you also clear to supervise someone?

Yes.

If you have a DC funeral director's license, you can supervise any DC apprentice.

Okay.

Should we I I don't know.

Supervision seems I think deeper than just No, Mr.

McGuire, you you've been doing this, so uh I I think we we agree on this point.

So why a funeral director should be able to supervise once you have that license?

Oh once you have your license, the district government says you are uh able to perform the functions of a funeral director and you should know what you're doing.

Um so I guess the assumption is if you have your license, you have the knowledge to also supervise.

Okay.

Now with the splitting, I I think that brings up an interesting point.

Because if you're a funeral director but not licensed to do embalming, then now something that previous funeral directors would have had to have known how to do and had sort of that experience for sure, there's a there's a chance that they are a funeral director that doesn't know how to embalm.

And so the supervision piece, you would need to make sure that a supervising to get to your point that should every funeral director be able to supervise right now?

I think yes.

Yes, because the education sort of matches everything.

Yes.

But I think to your point, Mr.

McGuire, is that if we did the combination license, the combination people would supervise would be they could supervise.

Yeah, or funeral directors would supervise funeral directors and embalmers would supervise embalmers.

But if you had the combination license, you could supervise both.

Okay.

That that's personal opinion.

Okay.

Right.

Um there are some new prohibit prohibitions under this bill.

So this bill would explicitly prohibit unlicensed practice for funeral directing and embalming, which but like I guess we we didn't write it down anywhere, so we needed to put that in there.

Um it would explicitly prohibit funeral service establishments or permitting employees or agents from a funeral from funeral directing unless a person is licensed or interned under direct supervision.

And then it would allow persons, it would prohibit allowing persons other than the funeral director to practice under his or her license.

Um we have any thoughts in terms of why this just needs is this just uh like to make it clear?

Or were there some challenges and people said, well, this wasn't written down anywhere?

I believe similar wording is in the current uh regulation and and statute.

Okay.

That it's illegal to perform those functions without a license.

Have you all had cases of unlicensed practice?

Yes.

Interesting.

But that the unlicensed my understanding is the unlicensed practice does not fall under the board of funeral directors because we only control licensees.

That's DLCP.

If someone is practicing without a license, we do an investigation, issue them an NOI for practicing without a license.

Um that's interesting.

Okay.

So you on the health side, unlicensed practice would go to the board for which you were purporting to be a member.

Yes.

We encounter this a lot actually with our boards and um commissions where someone is pretending to be an architect, an engineer, uh, and right now the boards see that as outside the scope of their view.

They oversee the the practitioners within the profession, not the pretenders.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I guess the only way that you guys would become aware of that issue is from complaints.

We they have to submit a complaint online.

Okay.

You have to submit documentation.

We have the same issue in health.

You can't just sort of say it on social media or speaking into the ether and hope that we're gonna get uh the message, you have to submit the documentation so that the proper investigation um can be done.

Um just a couple more questions specifically on the funeral director, Bill.

Um we didn't see now I I see in code that we have the license option for the surviving spouse, but we didn't see any documentation that we have any body who currently is operating under that particular license type.

Is that is the data and information correct?

According to my information, that's correct.

Okay.

Um we also did not see in other jurisdictions that they have this option.

Well, back to this a bit dated, maybe?

No.

Well, when when the law was changed in 84, um the thought was if there was a thriving business and the funeral director died, it would not be fair to the surviving spouse to cut off their income.

So therefore, that my understanding is that's why that provision was was put in, not to penalize the surviving spouse as long as they designated a licensed funeral director to run that firm.

So as long as they did not remarry, that firm could still be operated by anyone who had a funeral director's license.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, but that's kind of rude to say you can't remarry if you want to keep your business.

Yeah.

Is that not?

I think what you would say is there's some and I didn't say this at the outset of my testimony, and and Chairperson McGuire and I agree.

There's some reforms and modernization that we need to do.

These were the first two bills, as you know, that were already drafted.

And so anything like that that seems dated, we're happy to evaluate, particularly because there are you'll see there are what is it, like 49, no, 22 funeral home establishment licenses, but 249 funeral directors.

So a lot of funeral directors will travel, they may not own the funeral home, but they serve as the funeral director there.

Um, you know, someone who owns the funeral home may not actually be a funeral director, is that correct?

Uh on the current regulations, a funeral director, a licensed funeral director must be an owner, meaning that uh say as a corporation if they own one share, then that that qualifies as long as they are some type of owner.

Oh, that's interesting.

So okay.

I'm gonna separate this out, but we're gonna come back to the surviving spouse piece because I kind of feel like in some ways it might have had a space for it in the 80s, but I don't want to cut off anybody's income, but I also feel like we just need to update that a little bit.

The idea that you could just sort of pass down a license even though you haven't done the work and then just hire a funeral director.

But in terms of at the end of the day, who is legally responsible and who has the fiduciary responsibility to ensure that all of the employees are following the law would still be the spouse.

Well, it's your business technically.

If I'm wrong, no let me know.

That each funeral establishment has to have a designated funeral director.

And that person is responsible, no matter what ownership, that licensee is responsible for that firm.

So you may have civil suits or whatever against the owner, but as far as the board is concerned, that designated funeral director is the one responsible for the establishment.

Okay.

So let's say I own a funeral home.

But I'm not licensed.

I couldn't.

Okay.

Correct.

Okay.

As long as long as you have a licensee that is part owner.

Oh, that is part owner.

It doesn't have to be 100%, any any ownership.

Like you own 100%.

Your spouse dies, you take on the funeral home.

And then you have to hire a part, you basically have to get a partner.

So you have to like hire Mr.

McGuire and say, hey, I'll give you 15% of the business.

Well, no, we're we're talking about two different things and um let me.

No, please, you go.

Because I'm I'm just like you, uh this has required like such a deep dive into the funeral home licensing.

So I feel like I'm opening Pandora's box, but I'm curious.

My understanding is that the surviving spouse or estate license is completely different from your funeral director's license in that the surviving spouse does not have to have a license.

Obviously, the estate does not have a license.

Um the ownership for those licenses doesn't make any difference as long as there is a designated funeral director who is responsible.

The ownership only applies to the regular establishment license.

Not the not the um surviving spouse and not the state.

We can get back to you on like the details of the ownership requirement.

I I'm curious about this because I think we also, and I don't necessarily think it's been a situation here, but it's been a situation that we've kind of seen in other entities where you have corporate entities who are essentially buying in to funeral service.

And I think it's kind of important for us to know what the rules are of like who's responsible.

Is it some corporate entity that is based out of Ohio that happens to have a location here?

Is it the designated funeral director?

Which I think is probably what you say would be correct.

But okay, this is interesting.

All right.

Um one more on this.

So the Federal Trade Commission, um, the Federal Faith Trade Commission uh conducts undercover inspections of funeral homes to enforce its funeral rule on um price transparency.

And um previous inspections of DC identified some significant violations.

Um is the board aware of recent FTC inspection activity in the district, and how do you all um coordinate with federal enforcement to address those violations?

I don't know if that's a board specific or if that's DLCP specific.

The to my knowledge, the board has never been notified of uh FTC um spot inspections.

Okay.

Or or any scheduled inspection for that matter.

So to my knowledge, there's been no coordination between the organization.

Okay, DLCP?

No.

And uh unfortunately this is news to me.

Okay.

So I will most certainly be like on the FTC website in about 10 minutes.

So and anything that you have related to this, please feel free to share with us.

All right.

They have not contacted us directly.

So I'm not sure who they reach out to.

So we'll follow up on that one.

Um okay, green death care option.

Okay, so this bill would codify the definition of cremation.

Um we currently don't have a definition in district code.

Um so in the absence of that definition, does that mean that we effectively have a prohibition on cremation in the district?

Not to my knowledge.

The only well it's not a prohibition.

The reason in my way of thinking, the reason why we do not have a crematory any longer in the district.

There used to be one, uh, but they moved to Maryland a number of years ago.

Um, is because you in addition to the zoning, you have to have permission of um 50 per at least 50 percent of the neighbors within a hundred feet, I believe, of the proposed crematory.

And many people do not necessarily want to be living within you know of a hundred feet of crematory.

So my personal belief is that's the reason why you don't have any in the district.

Okay.

Yes, there's not an act of prohibition to our knowledge, but it's uh a high bar for actually getting licensed as a crematorium at the time.

All right.

This time.

Right.

I imagine from um zoning requirements in the district would limit the locations just based on that anyway.

Um probably would have to be commercial, whatever um zoning a funeral home could be established in.

Um I don't know whether whether it's as as low as R4 or whatever, but um uh I wouldn't have never looked into the zoning specifically for cremation, but I imagine that it's different than retail.

Yeah, but we have like manufacturing districts.

So you there's there are places where it probably could be zoned for uh it is right now at this time of novel matter.

Every once in a while we'll see an advertisement that makes us think there's a crematorium in the district.

Yeah, but there is not.

So we can look into whether or not there is actual space that fits that criteria zoned in the district for it, but uh right now we don't have any active.

Okay.

I mean, I think given um the uh current situation with uh crematory in Maryland that the district did have a contract with, perhaps we should look for other options.

Um just diversify the field out there if we can.

We're we're going through the uh the Office of Planning's comprehensive plan stuff now, and so I don't know.

Maybe I think there will be uh the discussion around where is appropriate to put a crematorium in the district given our like you know 11 square miles would be one.

I think the contract issue for sure we should evaluate.

Um and whether or not in other states they have a similar issue.

So like Rhode Island or someplace like that.

Yeah, smaller locations.

So we can certainly do some research into that with your team.

Okay.

Um the bill, the Green Deathcare um would also add two additional seats to the board of funeral directors, so you go from five seats to seven.

Um that's actually still smaller than Maryland and Virginia.

Now our application volume is smaller than both of theirs as well.

Um is seven the right number.

I can give you a personal opinion.

The the board has not discussed it.

Um personal opinion is the number of people we have on the board now and the composition seems to work pretty well.

We have pretty good discussions.

Okay.

Um when you increase the number of people, that can sometimes be good, sometimes not.

Um I don't know where where the thought of increasing the board number came from.

Yep.

Um if if it is increased, the cremation uh expert, uh, there should be something in the uh regulations um saying what a cremation expert is.

Um do they have to be certified as a as a crematory operator or do they have to uh be employed for five years or whatever?

Well, I would think at the very least.

Sorry, go ahead.

No, I'm so sorry, council member, please go.

Okay.

We so this is an area where the agency and the board might have a slight difference, although I think the board has acquiesced to admitting more folks to the board.

For us, it is important that we are keeping up with our neighbors and making sure that we have sort of fresh perspectives and ideas in addition to those who are extremely experienced and who know the field in and out.

And so I think we've and I I know April has spoken with the board and Mr.

McGuire about this before.

I think in our question responses, we we supported the idea of adding to the board.

Okay.

I don't have a perspective on the right number.

I think seven or an additional two members seems fine.

Um but that's the traditional practice, at least in terms of um we did a very big rewrite of health occupations provision.

When we add a license type, we usually like to give that license type representation on the board.

So at the very least, we gotta add somebody who's got um who who's representing the embalmers out there if we're gonna do that.

Now I recognize that there are definitely gonna be people who anyone who is existing on the board who's not a consumer member um would essentially qualify for the combination type license, because that's what you currently have.

But I could definitely foresee, you know, five to six years down the road where you just have individuals who are just licensed as embalmers who feel like their particular licensee issues, it's different than if I was a funeral director.

And they would want a voice on the board as well.

So I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to go here.

Um whoa, actually, I don't know if we did this for everybody.

Okay.

Um do you all only allow for DC residents to serve on your boards?

Yeah.

Yes.

For all of our boards and commission.

Okay, so we have an exception on the health side that if you're licensed and you work here but you don't live here, you can serve.

So that's why I'm asking.

I per again personally, I I would be in favor.

Um I think if you looked, there are very few funeral directors that live in the district.

Therefore, our pool is very small.

Right.

That's the issue that we had with a a number of our um like the board of podiatry or the ophthalmology.

Yeah.

I I hope that some of the opening we're doing in the profession, like with some of the changes that are being proposed to lower the threshold in some instances, we'll uh encourage district residents to join the profession.

Yeah.

Um but we're happy to have a discussion about need and a quorum and the concern.

We'll tell you we added a safeguard.

I think no more than a certain percentage of a health board can actually be somebody who's not from DC.

But there were just some dire boards where they have basically rotated through everybody who could possibly serve and they didn't want to do it anymore.

What's the size of like the health board shot on average?

Um the health boards range from um five to the board of medicine and board of nursing, which is like 15 or so people.

So it gets bigger in size.

But um it took some finagling to get that through my colleagues.

And so this would be as well, but I was just asking because I didn't realize that we only did it for health.

We did not uh apply that to everybody else.

Okay.

Um in terms of alkaline hydrolysis, uh Mr.

McGuire, is this something that's already covered in existing programs for mortuary science?

To my knowledge, no.

I I imagine there may be one or two institutions that are adding it.

Okay.

I I have no knowledge.

Okay.

Um I would imagine also that there would be certification programs, as there are certification programs for crematory operators that at some point there would be national certification for uh alkaline hydrolysis.

So is that a is that considered an endorsement or an additional certificate?

That would be an additional certificate that's not tied to a few directors license.

Got it.

Okay.

There we go.

Um I feel like these are not questions for you guys.

I feel like there's one agency that is missing here.

Um we have a question of like while 29 states have authorized alkaline hydrolysis, most still lack the infrastructure required to meaningfully support its implementation.

Do any of our neighboring states have this infrastructure?

I think in our full testimony we recommend speaking with DOEE and some of the other agencies that deal with the infrastructure concerns.

Okay.

Um I didn't read through that, but we we do recommend that.

Okay.

That's what I I was like, I feel like we need to call it.

We're not the experts in that, uh, but we are ha absolutely stakeholders.

Okay.

Um, so one of the public witnesses raised concerns about the the bill as drafted requiring an applicant to have practice continuously in the state or territory of licensure for at least five years preceding their application.

I thought that that might that was a lot.

Um thoughts on that one.

Well, um Maryland requires if you're coming into Maryland from out of state to get a Maryland license, you have to be continuously employed as a funeral director for five years.

Uh if you stop working um, say in the third year and and sit out a month, clock starts again, another five years.

The reciprocity agreement that um DC has with Virginia, uh five years is a part of that agreement.

So it seems, at least in this area, that five years is a accepted uh length of time.

Okay.

All right.

Um I think on the green death, what we'll do um is we'll send some post-hearing questions to you all, DLCP, and then we'll also I guess include Department of Energy and Environment, DC water, and D dot probably.

D dot.

If you are you gonna have to tear up the streets, like for well, just I would say you you should you should include the agencies that you think are appropriate.

Okay.

It's like D not, what do they have to do with it?

There's not infrastructure, you know, and they keep all of the maps, they they are responsible for all of the street skate maps for what's underneath and anyway.

Although for infrastructure, I don't know that other than a standard building that anything would be um involved that would need a study because the the um result would go straight down the um sewer into the sewer system.

Yeah, but I guess the way that Sean he said it would be right into the drain system.

Yeah, and but I feel like I should talk to DC Water about that.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They might have saying that we don't need to build anything new, we can use our existing infrastructure probably.

Okay.

Um Director Crow, I'm gonna transition just to some specific questions for Chairman McGuire.

We do have some other questions that are related to DLCP, but I do recognize that you had a time constraint unless it do you want April, if you are willing and or sorry.

Okay.

I think you're well, thank you.

Thank you, sorry.

Okay.

Um, I'll go to Chairman McGuire first as we're sort of transitioning.

Um I just have a couple of questions about board activity.

Um the public agenda and not the sign meeting minutes appear on the open meetings C C calendar.

Like if we go to the open meetings calendar, there are two different things we will see.

Sometimes we'll see the meeting minutes.

And then sometimes we'll just see the public agenda still.

Does that mean that the meeting didn't occur if the public agenda is still the only thing that's online?

Not necessarily.

Generally recently it has become rare that we do not have a scheduled meeting.

Okay.

Except for August, we generally don't have a meeting in August.

So no, if it does not appear, that does not necessarily mean that there was no meeting.

Okay.

Okay.

Mr.

McGuire, if you could just clarify for the record, who would apply for a funeral courtesy cardholder, and what type of documentation do you all look for when someone is applying for that?

We only uh allow courtesy cards to Maryland uh morticians and Virginia funeral service uh practitioners, which are the same as our current funeral director license.

And that um really the the the only uh documentation is that we rare verify that that person does have a valid license in that jurisdiction.

Okay.

Um it does allow you only to uh come into the district to remove uh a decedent to sign and file a death certificate and to return the seed for burial.

Uh it doesn't allow you to have funeral services in the district or to prepare anyone in the district or anything except for those those items.

Okay.

So if you guys were denying someone for a courtesy card, that's because you learned that they didn't actually weren't licensed in the jurisdiction that they said they were?

Sometimes somebody will apply for a jurisdiction other than Maryland or Virginia.

Oh, I see.

And and we deny it because they are in the wrong jurisdiction.

So what happens when you have to explain do you ever have to explain that to families?

To family?

No.

So let's say, for instance, though, like the person is here, but the family wants the funeral service to be in Georgia.

Okay.

What the usual procedure is the funeral director in Georgia would contact the D.C.

funeral director.

Um if you're talking about a distance of Georgia rather than say Pennsylvania somewhere, usually you're involved with uh either over-the-road transportation or air transportation.

Um local DC funeral home would uh remove the decedent and prepare and file a death certificate.

Uh at that point, either the receiving funeral home could come over the road and transport the person back to wherever they were going, or the funeral home here could prepare the decedent and bomb and then ship.

So that's how it is usually handled.

Oh.

Okay.

Yeah.

I was going to learn something new today.

All right.

Um you explain how um the district establish a reciprocity channel with North Carolina.

The there was a reciprocity agreement with North Carolina.

Um a number of years ago, we couldn't find a copy of the agreement.

So we contacted North Carolina and North Carolina basically said, yeah, we have an agreement.

We can't find our copy either.

Um so the board decided since there is no written documentation, um, we don't uh reciprocate with North Carolina any longer.

Okay.

Yeah.

But would the board be open to reciprocity with other jurisdictions?

Oh, yes.

I think I I I can't speak for the board, but I I would think that uh yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Some you know somebody has a paper copy of that reciprocity agreement, probably in the back of a disc or something.

Oh, you are not going to be able to do that.

No, go ahead.

Okay.

Um I would say um reciprocity not only for as it relates to the board of funeral directors and funeral directors, et cetera, but across all of our boards, that is something that the mayor and director pro support.

So yes, that is something that we would be interested in further looking into.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Let me bring up one other thing.

In addition to reciprocity, there's licensure by endorsement.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um so we don't necessarily have to have an agreement with the state in order to allow some other licensee to come into the district.

Right.

Right.

And we don't have limits of which states we do licensure by endorsement or do we have a regulations say if the other jurisdiction has similar licensing laws as a district, then we will will accept them.

Okay.

And only if that state will also accept DC licensees.

So it's got to be a two-way street.

Completely.

So we we need written documentation for whatever jurisdiction is saying they will accept DC licensees.

Okay.

In an ideal situation, I feel like, and we have this happening on the health sides too.

Like reciprocity with Maryland and Virginia makes sense.

Sometimes reciprocity with our Southern neighbor is a little bit difficult because their standards are generally looser than ours on a variety of different things.

So like for instance, um they don't require um or didn't at one point require background checks, which made it really hard for us on the health licensing side, because like we do.

Um and so does Maryland, right?

So like it was just uh these complications of things.

All right.

Um funeral prices transparency, I went to ask about.

So my staff found that several of the funeral homes listed in attachment A that you all sent to us could only be located through the National Funeral Service Provider databases.

Um and many of them did not have general price lists available on their websites or didn't indicate whether or not the cremation services that they were offering on their website was actually happening outside of the district, which I think is a transparency question.

Um is this something that the board takes a look at?

Not necessarily.

It's not required by federal uh regulations.

Um the Attorney General's office, I believe, uh is uh talking about having prices uh put on web pages if the funeral home has a web page.

Yeah.

Um that could be a local requirement, but it's not federal.

Um I haven't seen any type of um regulation being proposed about uh the crematory being outside of the district.

Um I will say, just in terms of context.

So in 2022, 22 States Attorney Generals and urged the Federal Trade Commission to update its rules on funeral pricing transparency.

It was the District of Columbia that led that coalition.

So maybe this is more a note for the OAG to sort of work with you all, but like if we're gonna lead a coalition about funeral price transparency, then we should be practicing what we preach um in our own jurisdiction.

Um our experience is that uh my my firm, we have our price list on our web page because it gives consumers information.

And when somebody calls to ask for prices, we can give them to them and also say, go to our web page and look.

You'll you'll see you know, prices there.

Um so I believe the members of the board you know feel the same.

Um I I I don't have a problem with that transparency.

And may I also say while that may be outside the scope or may not necessarily be required by federal law, that would be in alignment with the district's consumer protection procedures act.

So we would support price, um listing the prices, making sure whatever you're staying on your website is accurate and current and is stated properly.

So if you're staying that you offer a service that you do not, or it's not in alignment in one were to find that they can submit a complaint with DLCP's consumer protection unit because that may fall under a CPPA violation.

I'm not specifically familiar with the um AGs um matter that you mentioned.

I definitely talked to my colleagues that were here earlier and find out more as they say we collaborate and talk all the time to find out more, but that would be something that we would definitely align ourselves with.

Okay.

Um let's talk a little bit about interstate enforcement.

So as I kind of mentioned earlier in tw in 2025, heaven-bound cremation services in Maryland cited for mishandling human remains.

The district had paid over $900,000 for its services, and one of the owners of the crematorium had admitted to improperly storing remains as early as 2017.

Um describe from the DLCP perspective the level of communication you all have with Maryland and Virginia regarding violations.

Um this is more for DLCP than it is for the board.

I think it's a matter of both, but as it relates to DLCP, if we do learn of something of complaint is filed and it does uh also impact another jurisdiction, we will coordinate with them, share uh information to the extent that we can and vice versa.

Um, but it depends on the facts of the situation, but definitely wanting to protect consumers wherever they are, because you obviously know that they're going to there would be families that are impacted in multiple jurisdictions, we would coordinate and work with our sister jurisdictions.

Okay.

Were you guys informed of this one, especially considering we had a contract with them?

We um matter of fact, the board did um file a complaint with consumer protection saying this was unlicensed activities.

They had an office in the district.

Yeah.

Um so that was out of our jurisdiction, we had to pass it on to consumer protection.

I see.

Um we the board really didn't learn of what was going on until it hit the newspapers.

Okay.

Yeah.

But any time a complaint comes to our board that deals with the Maryland or Virginia funeral home, we forward that to the proper uh agency in the other jurisdiction.

Okay.

So you all did submit a complaint for unlicensed practice to DLCP.

How is that handled on that side?

I'll have to um speak with that unit to get the facts of that particular matter follow up with the committee.

Okay.

Um Mr.

McGuire, are licensed funeral directors required to disclose the other practices that they own and operate with outside of the district?

I don't understand.

Um so when you're submitting a license to become a licensed funeral director, is there a question that says, do you own and operate any other funeral establishments across the country?

Not for license application, no.

Okay.

Um so we talked a little bit about this, but um states are increasingly addressing the regulation of large corporate-owned funeral services or multi-location operators.

So, like you got a location in DC, one in Ohio, one in California, et cetera.

Um has the board ever considered creating a new license for corporate-owned funeral service providers?

Not to my knowledge.

Um to my knowledge, there are two funeral establishments in the district that are uh corporate owned.

Um about the the ownership.

I guess if a funeral director owns one share in this huge corporation, then then that qualifies as uh you know owner being a licensed funeral director.

Um but that that's the only question I really have about um large corporate ownership of local penal homes.

Okay.

Um in the agency's pre-hearing responses, the agency indicated that the board received 11 complaints regarding funeral homes in fiscal year 25.

Six of those, the cases were closed, one was referred to OIC.

Um, three were listed under as other, and one is under investigation.

Um you all didn't provide us any context of the types of investigations, so I'll just ask what are the categories of complaints that you all are receiving.

Um have to be off the top of the head.

I I don't have the information.

Umplaints, which the board cannot um uh adjudicate that that's passed on to consumer protection also, I believe.

Um have to do with poor service, which um the board really can't do too much about poor service.

If there's no um regulation that uh was violated.

It isn't followed, we can't do anything there.

Most of the complaints are of those nature where does not fall under the under the board.

Um I can't give you any more specific information off the top of the head, but yeah.

And we're happy to follow up with the committee if you want more details about that.

But I think to just follow up on what Mr.

McGuire said and Dr.

Director Crow, excuse me, mentioned that earlier.

Sometimes there are complaints that file with the board, the board may not take action because it's not within their purview to do so and it's referred to our consumer protection unit.

And so they may investigate it for unlicensed business activity, um, a consumer protection complaint.

So in which case, uh no some infraction may be issued for one of those violations that is separate from um something that falls within the board.

So I'm jurisdiction.

I just wonder, though, what is the follow-up practice with the person who submitted the complaint?

Do they receive a notice that says thank you for submitting a complaint?

It's been referred to DLCP for further look, or thank you for receiving the complaint.

Unfortunately, this is outside of the board's purview.

Like it was just trying to make sure that the complaints process is not a black hole.

My understanding is that staff does do that.

Okay.

All right.

Um false advertising, would that fall under the board, or is that a DLCP question?

That would be our and that will fall under unfair and deceptive trade practices.

That's the CPPA violation.

Okay.

Um this is gonna sound random, but I promise you there is a purpose and a thought.

Okay.

Who has jurisdiction over pet cremation services?

No one.

In the district, to my knowledge.

Because there are no crematories in the district.

Is is a crematory for humans the same as for pets.

Industry standards say they should be separate.

There are facilities that have both human retorts and pet retorts.

Oh, okay.

So if we don't have any crematoriums, then it wouldn't be a thing.

Okay.

It's good to know.

What happens with the pets?

Um okay.

I think um I think we're done.

I will have some follow-up questions.

We'll obviously um copy you guys on the follow-up questions that we sent to the um other agencies, particularly about the Green Death bill option, just so we have a clarity there.

Um but thank you so much for your time.

Is there anything you wanted to say in closing just want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today?

I know Mr.

McGuire.

Um I can speak for Mr.

McGuire.

So he can speak for himself.

But it was the opportunity to be able to weigh in on both bills.

Um bill twenty-five forty-seven uh forty-seven and bill twenty-five four fifty-seven.

Um five forty-seven, excuse me.

You know, we definitely those are just we are always looking for our areas of opportunity to increase economic opportunities for individuals, expand.

Um the industry wants definitely stay abreath on trend as director pro mentioned.

So with some few tweaks and definitely welcome the opportunity to work with the committee during um markup on both of those bills.

Okay.

Mr.

McGuire.

It's always great to come to this historic building and to meet with council members.

So uh it's our pleasure to be here.

Awesome.

All right.

So that does conclude today's hearing.

Um, I want to thank all the witnesses who spoke today.

The record will remain open until five PM on uh Monday, April sixth.

Um, for the public to submit testimony.

You may submit written statements, and these are for all three bills, but I mean if you want to comment on all three, you submit separately because they will move separately.

Um you can submit your written statements at the coun council's hearing management system on the DC Council website, DC Council.gov backslash hearings.

Um the next um hearing for the committee on health will be on Wednesday, March twenty-fifth at nine thirty on three bills as well.

Um streamlining Medicaid Credentialing Amendment Act of 2025, the lowering the cost of prescription drugs act of twenty twenty-six and the food policy council procurement amendment act of twenty twenty-five.

Um with no further business before the committee, um the time is three eighteen PM and this hearing is adjourned.

Thank you, everyone, and I'm not sure if you're not a good idea.