Texas has 1,674 licensed funeral homes and crematories. The state agency charged with inspecting them employs two inspectors.
That is one inspector for every 837 facilities. If both inspectors worked 250 days a year and did nothing but inspections, each facility could expect a visit roughly once every 40 months. That assumes no complaints, no investigations, no travel time between facilities, and no paperwork. It also assumes each inspector does nothing else.
The Texas Funeral Service Commission provided those numbers on July 31, 2026, in response to a public records request filed by Obitley on July 11. The response included a licensing spreadsheet with active counts and staff totals. The numbers are the first hard enforcement staffing data Obitley has obtained from a large state.
They are the worst ratio documented in any state so far.
By the Numbers
What Texas told Obitley
The TFSC response came from Interim Executive Director Maria Haynes. It included a spreadsheet titled "TFSC Current License" showing active license counts and staff. The data covers facilities and individuals licensed as of the date of the response.
For enforcement staffing, the spreadsheet lists three investigators and two inspectors. Those five people are responsible for overseeing every licensed funeral establishment and crematory in the second-largest state by population.
The TFSC cover letter said the agency needs approximately two months to compile the remaining requested items: inspection counts by year, staffing reports, and any legislation affecting inspection requirements. The inspection data sheet in the spreadsheet was empty. It contained a note pointing Obitley to the agency's website at tfsc.texas.gov/Reports.
The agency pointed to a website rather than providing the data directly.
The ownership data barrier
Obitley filed a separate request asking for records of funeral home ownership transfers and license changes from January 1, 2023 to the present, including any ties to Park Lawn Corporation or other consolidators. The TFSC responded with a cost estimate of $1,335.49.
The breakdown reveals where the money goes. Labor charges total $105. Programming time adds $28.50. CPU time costs $1.99. Document retrieval accounts for $1,200.
That $1,200 line item is 240 individual document retrievals at $5 each. The other charges total $135.49. The bulk of the cost is a per-document retrieval fee that makes the records effectively inaccessible to an independent publication.
Obitley narrowed the request on August 6 to a simple spreadsheet export: establishment name, previous owner, new owner, date of transfer. No supporting documents, no correspondence, no individual files. That should eliminate the per-document retrieval charge. The TFSC has not yet responded to the modified request. Under the Texas Public Information Act, the agency must respond within 10 business days of the original request, making the deadline August 14, 2026.
How Texas compares
Obitley has now received public records responses from six states as part of its ongoing investigation into funeral home inspection infrastructure across the country. The results fall into three categories.
Texas provided hard numbers. They are grim, but they exist. The state has 1,674 facilities and five enforcement staff.
Indiana provided numbers earlier in the investigation. The state has five inspectors covering more than 600 licensed facilities, a ratio of approximately 1:120. Texas has more than three times as many facilities per inspector.
Colorado admitted it conducted zero routine inspections in 2020 and 2021. The state performed five inspections in 2022 and 20 in 2023. Then the Return to Nature scandal happened. Investigators found approximately 190 decaying bodies at a funeral home in Penrose. Colorado passed a law requiring inspections for the first time after the scandal.
Wisconsin refused to provide data, claiming its systems were "temporarily unavailable." Delaware told Obitley to look up licensees one by one through a state portal.
Oklahoma acknowledged Obitley's request on August 6 after the original request was sent to a dead email domain. Tyler Stiles of the Oklahoma Funeral Board confirmed receipt and estimated a 4-to-6-week response timeline. Mississippi was resent the same day after its original email bounced.
Nineteen state insurance departments remain completely silent on a parallel request about preneed funeral insurance oversight data. Those requests were filed July 17. Follow-ups went out July 29. As of August 7, states including New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, and Georgia have not responded at all.
What the ratio means in practice
A ratio of one inspector per 837 facilities means routine inspections are mathematically impossible at any meaningful frequency.
If Texas's two inspectors conducted one inspection per business day, 250 days a year, they would complete 500 inspections annually. With 1,674 facilities, each location would be inspected once every 3.3 years, or about 40 months. That is the theoretical maximum, assuming each inspector spends an entire day on a single facility and does no other work.
In practice, inspectors handle complaints, follow up on violations, attend administrative proceedings, and travel between facilities. Texas covers 268,596 square miles. A funeral home in El Paso is 850 miles from one in Beaumont.
The likely reality is that most Texas funeral homes and crematories go years between inspections, if they are inspected at all outside of complaint-driven visits. The TFSC has not yet provided the inspection frequency data that would confirm this. Obitley is awaiting that response.
The cost of waiting
The Return to Nature case in Colorado demonstrated what happens when inspection infrastructure does not exist. Jon and Carie Hallford stored approximately 190 bodies in a building without refrigeration, handed families what appeared to be fake cremated remains, and continued accepting new business for years. Colorado had conducted zero routine inspections during the period the abuse occurred.
The fraud was discovered when neighbors reported a smell. Regulators had no idea.
In Connecticut, Mark and Jean Pietras stole $794,000 from 179 families through a prepaid funeral scheme that ran from 2011 to 2019. The Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection did not detect the fraud. It collapsed on its own when the Pietras could not sustain the operation.
In Michigan, Terry Alvin Kaufman stole over $1.1 million from 204 families, including wards of the state, over a decade. The fraud was discovered when it collapsed on its own. Regulatory oversight never caught it. Michigan's Department of Insurance and Financial Services later told Obitley it has zero enforcement actions on record related to preneed funeral insurance.
The pattern is consistent. When a state does not inspect, fraud runs until it self-destructs. The families who lose money are the discovery mechanism.
What Texas is doing about it
The TFSC is a self-funded agency, meaning license fees cover its entire operating budget. The agency does not receive legislative appropriations. Its staffing levels are determined by the revenue it collects from the industry it regulates.
This creates a built-in conflict. Increasing the inspection force requires either raising license fees on funeral homes or redirecting existing revenue. Funeral homes, through their trade associations, resist fee increases. The result is an enforcement apparatus sized to what the regulated industry is willing to fund. Consumer protection needs are secondary.
The Texas Legislature has not passed legislation in the 2023 or 2025 sessions that would change the inspection requirements, staffing levels, or funding model of the TFSC. The agency's self-evaluation report is available on the Texas Legislature Online website.
What families can do
Until state inspection infrastructure catches up to the number of facilities it oversees, consumers are the primary line of defense. Several steps can reduce the risk of encountering a funeral home with undisclosed problems.
Check the TFSC license verification tool at tfsc.texas.gov before selecting a provider. The database shows whether a facility is currently licensed and whether any disciplinary actions are on record. This takes less than five minutes.
Ask whether the funeral home is independently owned or part of a corporate chain. Texas does not currently publish ownership data in an accessible format. Obitley's request for that data is pending.
For prepaid funeral contracts, understand the difference between trust-funded and insurance-funded preneed. Trust-funded preneed falls under the TFSC's jurisdiction. Insurance-funded preneed falls under the Texas Department of Insurance. Both systems have oversight gaps. Ask the funeral director which funding mechanism applies and request documentation showing where the money is held.
File complaints with the TFSC if a funeral home fails to deliver services, mishandles remains, or violates the FTC Funeral Rule. Complaints are the primary way the agency identifies problems between inspections. The complaint form is on the TFSC website.
What This Means for You
*Sources: Texas Funeral Service Commission FOIA response (Maria Haynes, Interim Executive Director, July 31, 2026); TFSC Current License spreadsheet (licensing data, July 31, 2026); TFSC Public Information Request Cover Letter (inspection data timeline, July 31, 2026); TFSC Open Record Estimate Request (ownership data cost breakdown, July 31, 2026); Obitley modified records request (August 6, 2026); Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies FOIA response (inspection counts, July 2026); Indiana State Board of Funeral and Cemetery Service public records response (staffing data); Oklahoma Funeral Board acknowledgment (Tyler Stiles, August 6, 2026); Michigan DIFS FOIA response #20804 (William Peattie, July 28, 2026); Ohio DOI public records response #6001 (Roger Hansen, July 31, 2026); Vermont DFR response (David Manitsky, August 5, 2026); Texas Public Information Act, Tex. Gov't Code Chapter 552.*
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