Natural organic reduction is one step closer to becoming legal in New Jersey, clearing a key Senate committee and getting wide bipartisan support.

The Senate Commerce Committee voted on June 12, 2025 to release the bill in a unanimous vote. It now heads for the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee for approval. If released from that committee, the bill heads to the full Senate for consideration.

The measure, S-3007, gained a prominent Republican supporter when Senator Jon Bramnick (R-21), a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, signed on as a co-sponsor following a May 22 hearing on the bill. Senator Joseph Vitale (D-19), who sponsored the measure, said the bill gives New Jersey families an important, additional choice when considering funeral arrangements.

“Natural organic reduction offers a sustainable alternative that lowers carbon emissions and conserves resources. New Jersey should expand safe, dignified, eco-conscious choices at life's end,” Vitale said in a press release. “Families deserve choices that reflect their values. This bill modernizes our funeral laws, supports innovation in the deathcare industry, and helps protect the planet for future generations.”

Natural organic reduction, the process of controlled supervised decomposition of a human body resulting in the conversion of human remains into a soil-like product, has seen little legislative opposition in New Jersey. The state Assembly passed its version of the bill in December 2024 by a vote of 71-1-1.

The process, first legalized in Washington State in 2019, continues to gain traction throughout the country. NOR legislation has also seen recent movement in Rhode Island and Georgia in recent weeks. Currently 13 states have legalized natural organic reduction, with legislation pending in 12 other states including New Jersey.

The information contained in this column is a report of the actions taken by the board members who were present during the open public session portion of the meeting only. It is not a transcript of the official board minutes or an official record of attendance. It does not address board member attendance or actions taken during the executive session that typically follows the open session and is closed to the public.

June 10, 2025

Members Present

Charles F. Bechtold, CFSP, President; Bruce Van Tassel, Secretary; Garrett C. Jones; Aladar Komjathy; Curtis Macysyn; Eleanor Rudolph.

Four vacancies remain on the Board: one professional, two public, and one state government designee.

Staff Present

Quin Archer, Executive Director; Dan Roman, Deputy Attorney General; Maria Rojas Letchford, Deputy Attorney General; Nytaino Romulus, Regulatory Analyst.

Public

New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association Executive Director and CEO George R. Kelder Jr., CFSP, Director of Government Affairs Samantha Link and Corporate Governance Manager Jonathan R. Bender, and nine members of the public were present.

Executive Director’s Report

The Board received no complaints in May for a total of 15 complaints received in 2025.

The annual election of officers was held. Charles F. Bechtold, CFSP, was re-elected president of the Board and Bruce Van Tassel was re-elected secretary.

Approved Internships

• Colleen Aull, Smith McCracken Funeral Home
• Mark Austin, Vander May-Wayne Colonial Funeral Home Inc.
• Madison Douglass, Radzieta Funeral Home
• Kyle Flynn, Flynn and Son Funeral Homes Inc.
• Elijah Frieson, Gabriel D. Glover Funeral Home
• Brittany Hoffman, Woody Home for Service
• Melissa Jablonski, J.L. Apter Memorial Chapels
• Fanta Nuradin, Palmyra Home for Funeral & Life Memorial Services
• Serena Papavero, Branchburg Funeral Home
• Paige Santoni, Evergreen Funeral Home Inc.
• Thomas Sharples, Vaineieri Funeral Home
• Robert Spoto, Las Rosas Bannworth Funeral Home
• Jade Watson, Watson Mortuary Service Inc.

New Licensees

By Application

• Connor McGlynn
• Jack S Thompson

Licensed by Application for 2025: 8
Licensed by Credentials for 2025: 2

New Funeral Home Registrations

• Boakes Funeral Home, Mays Landing; Manager, Keith Boakes
• Forked River Funeral and Cremation Service LLC, Forked River; Manager, Frederick Whiteley

The Board registered two mortuaries in May and 10 mortuaries in 2025.

Continuing Education Report

The Board approved the courses listed on the meeting agenda, with several exceptions, and will post the approved courses on the Board’s website under the licensee tab.

Correspondence

• On May 8, 2025, Assemblyman Sterley Stanley sponsored Assembly Bill 5624, which requires the Division of Consumer Affairs to create an open data portal and provide certain datasets online. Following on the Board’s request that George Kelder provide background on the bill, the Board voted to endorse the legislation.
• On May 19, 2025, Senator Joseph Lagana and Senator James Beach introduced Senate Bill 4387, requiring the establishment of tracking systems in the Division of Consumer Affairs to determine compliance with continuing education requirements. Following on the Board’s request that Mr. Kelder provide background on the bill, the Board also voted to endorse this legislation.
• On May 19, 2025, Senator Carmen Amato Jr. introduced Senate Bill 4406, which clarifies child support obligation notice and certification requirements for applicants for State licenses. The Board voted to endorse this legislation with one member opposing.
• Dalene Paull provided the Board with a copy of Georgia Senate Bill 213 amending the: “Fair Business Practices Act of 1975”. This act relates to the ban of commercial cheating services that target students and examinees who are seeking a professional license. Georgia just became the 19th state with laws related to cheating.

Disciplinary Actions

• A settlement has been reached with BongHo Ha for violation of N.J.A.C. 13:36-10.3(a) and 13:45C.1.3(a)5 for failing to complete the 10 required continuing education credits. BongHo Ha is required to complete the 10 required continuing education credits within two months of the settlement as well as payment of a civil penalty in the amount of $1,000.

Public Comment

George Kelder inquired of Nytaino Romulus, the Regulatory Analyst assigned to the Board as to the apparent delay in the Board’s publication of amendments to the intern regulations. At the December 2024 meeting, amendments to the Intern Subchapter of N.J.A.C. 13:36-2.1 were pre-approved. The regulations were amended and revised for more clarity and readability such as adding and amending definitions, requirements for internship registration, qualifications for a preceptor, reporting requirements and other regulations regarding internships and preceptors.

Mr. Kelder reminded the Board they voted to adopt the amendments more than six months ago and were to undergo further review before publication in the New Jersey Register.

Mr. Romulus said that he would check on the status of the proposed regulatory changes.

Next Board Meeting

The Board moved into Executive Session at 9:53 a.m. and noted that the next Board meeting will be held on Tuesday, July 1, 2025 at 9:30 a.m. via Zoom.

In observance of the federal holiday of Juneteenth, the New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association will be closed on Thursday, June 19, 2025.

The office will reopen at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, June 20, 2025.

Advocates in New Zealand are urging a major change in the country’s funeral laws. A police sergeant in Texas is struck and killed during a funeral procession. And a paper published in England urges consideration of allowing natural organic reduction and alkaline hydrolysis in England and Wales. These stories and more are in the week in funeral news.

NEWS

New Zealand Advocacy Group Calls for Removal of Funeral Directors as Cremation Middlemen
By Kate Green (RNZ)
An advocacy group in New Zealand wants to see funeral directors removed as the middlemen in cremations, saying it's costing people money. Death Without Debt spokesperson Fergus Wheeler explained two doctors were required to sign off on a death for cremation–the first would have seen the body and made notes about the cause of death, and a second doctor was required sign-off on that paperwork. Currently, the system is set up so that people needed a funeral director to facilitate this second sign-off, with funeral directors billing the family for doing so. But legally, it did not have to be done this way. Read more here.

“Dead” Woman, 88, Wakes up Inside Her Own Coffin after Coroner’s Mistake
By Phoebe Tonks (Express)
An 88-year-old woman narrowly avoided being buried alive, after she “woke up” while her seemingly dead body was being prepared by funeral workers. Read more here.

Historical Society Works to Make Arizona Mortuary a Designated Historic Building
By Steve Nielsen (Fox 10)
A Phoenix, AZ, funeral home operating for 75 years is asking the city to declare the building historic. From the outside to the inside, it's beautiful. The family that started it all loves this place. Read more here.

Police Sergeant Dies after Struck During Funeral Procession
By Scott Lawrence (KDFM)
Colleagues who are part of the thin blue line and many in Southeast Texas are remembering a police officer who made the ultimate sacrifice. Sergeant J.D. White with the Angleton Police Department was struck by a driver while working a funeral procession on June 1. He was critically injured and flown to a hospital where he later died. Read more here.

Skipping Post-Death Gatherings Could Be Taking Toll on Ability to Mourn
By Hilary Angus (Times Colonist)
Fewer Canadians have been hosting funerals in recent years, opting instead for cremation followed by long-delayed services, or no service at all. Karla Kerr, a Victoria, British Columbia, death doula and former funeral-home worker with more than 16 years’ experience in the death-care field in Alberta and British Columbia, is concerned that the trend toward long-delayed or non-existent ceremonies can have a negative impact on grieving families, and the wider community. Read more here.

TRENDS

Water Cremation and Human Composting Could Be Offered in England and Wales Instead of Traditional Funerals
By Sky News
A Law Commission consultation is proposing legal approval of new methods beyond burial, cremation, and the rarely used burial at sea. The paper published recently highlights two methods used in other countries: alkaline hydrolysis and human composting. Read more here.

Annual salaries for licensed funeral home owners in New Jersey remained stable in 2024, topping $133,000 and mirroring the compensation from previous years, according to the figures gathered for the Thanexus 2024 Year in Review.

The average annual compensation for Thanexus licensed funeral home owners is $133,596, slightly below the $133,652 reported in 2023, but on par and slightly ahead of previous years, except for an outlier year in 2022 when an average of $145,007 was reported.

The nation’s first funeral practice management cooperative, Thanexus gathers information that details average yearly compensation for employees of shareholders for whom Thanexus provides payroll and benefits services.

Licensed non-owners realized an increase in annual salary from $87,967 reported in 2023 to $88,811 in 2024. The salaries for newly licensed non-owners, however, decreased from $69,765 to $67,829, according to the report.

Clerical and administrative staff and interns saw slight to moderate increases in hourly wages, the report showed, but funeral attendants’ hourly wage decreased.

The salaries of New Jersey’s funeral directors remain far above the national average, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Morticians, undertakers and funeral arrangers nationally had an average salary of $59,420 per year in 2024, the BLS reports.

Thanexus uses actual W-2 wage data to calculate average and median salaries for several categories of employees, making it one of the most accurate barometers of funeral home employee compensation available. In 2024, Thanexus shared employment with and administered benefits for the 791 employees of its 66 shareholders in 119 registered mortuaries across 101 worksites, for a combined annual payroll of $33 million. A total of 259 of those workers are licensed funeral directors.

The Thanexus retirement plan posted gains as well. At the end of 2024, the plan had total assets of $123 million, an increase of $3 million over the 2023 figure. The retirement plan has 438 participants. The average account balance for participants between the ages of 40 and 59 is $339,094, according to the report. The average weighted expense ratio of the retirement plan is .3 percent, well below the national average, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Thanexus also declared $275,578 in patronage dividends in 2024, $205,684 of which will be returned to its shareholders is cash distributions with the remaining $68,895 allocated as member equity. In the past 24 years, Thanexus has declared nearly $3.3 million in patronage dividends, and more than $2 million has been returned in cash distributions.

Those seeking more details concerning Thanexus can find the 2024 Thanexus State of the Industry report here.

Interested in learning more about the Thanexus advantage?

Contact Chris Murphy at 888.309.5137 for a confidential discussion about how Thanexus can help your funeral home with its benefit offerings and staff oversight.