This an article from today's Messenger-Inquirer newspaper. Nadine AG's office wants to register state's cemeteries 12 June 2001 By Joy Campbell Messenger-Inquirer Kentucky has 917 identified cemeteries. A state task force is setting out to find more, and its members are calling on the public to help. Glenn Taylor of Glenn Funeral Home is serving on the Attorney General's Task Force on the Preservation of Kentucky's Cemeteries. He is representing the Funeral Directors Association of Kentucky. "The thrust of the task force's charge is to identify cemeteries in Kentucky -- those small, rural cemeteries that no one accepts responsibility for or have been forgotten or abandoned," Taylor said. "The first step is to find them. Where are they?" Taylor is urging anyone who knows where a cemetery is located to fill out a survey the AG's office has created. The survey is available from Taylor or from the AG's web site at http://www.kyattorneygeneral.com/cemetery. "If people will get the survey to me, I'll see that it gets to the attorney general's office," Taylor said. They also may be mailed to the address on the form. The plan is for surveys to be returned by Aug. 15. Then the task force will send a report to Attorney General Ben Chandler by Sept. 30. Chandler will share the findings with the 2002 Kentucky General Assembly in the fall. The new data base is just one part of a larger issue the task force has been asked to study. The group also will study cemeteries' financial and physical condition and recommend long-term solutions for maintaining them, according to Corey Bellamy, a spokesman in the AG's office. "The group also has been asked to recommend immediate action which may be implemented to address public safety and maintenance issues," Bellamy said. "We want to identify the cemeteries across the state and determine what needs, if any, they have." Situations in Louisville and Lexington have focused recent attention on maintenance of cemeteries. The Louisville community has struggled to keep up three large and historically significant cemeteries. The company which operated those sites is bankrupt and did not have an adequate perpetual care trust fund, according to information on the AG's Web site. At Cove Haven in Lexington, staff from the AG's office and an archeologist found casket fragments and skeletal remains at a site where a new grave was dug, Bellamy said. Issues the task force may address after gathering the data could include physical conditions and solvency of cemeteries, the role of state and local government in overseeing cemeteries, and identification of federal or private funding sources for cemeteries. Taylor said there are diverse interests on the 24-member task force, including genealogists as well as people whose families owned a cemetery, but the land is now owned by someone else, and people whose families were buried in places where over-burial has occurred. Rep. Reginald Meeks, a Democrat from Louisville, chairs the task force. "There is general concern that part of history may be lost and that people need assurance that their families' resting places are preserved," Taylor said. Funeral directors have an interest in the project because they often are called upon to serve families who will be buried in these historic sites, Taylor said. "It takes us considerable time to find who is responsible for these cemeteries." Of the 917 known cemeteries, the AG's office regulates only 30 percent of them, Bellamy said. "The attorney general's office regulates cemeteries that are in the business of making a profit," Bellamy said. Family cemeteries are not regulated unless someone is profiting from operating them. The data base the task force is putting together covers all cemeteries, even those not regulated, Bellamy said.