At 3:30 today was the public hearing in the Senate Ways and Means committee. TVW Archive here: Bill number 5332 starts at 1:20. Only one person testifying in favor of the bill, a coroner that wants the increased fee for certified certificates. The Health department issues 500,000 certificates a year so local governments will get about $1,000,000 more in income from their $2 increase in fees. The other $3 goes to the state for their state crime lab. They still say genealogist have agreed to the informational death certificates without a cause of death.
I don’t really care about the increase in the fee for a certified copy, nor the removal of the social security number if the certificate has that, I want a true copy of the record I am looking for.
Thanks for tracking this bill. These records should be much easier to access without certification.
So they really think genealogists don’t want an original document? Good Grief! And they want to charge us more? What Chutzpah.