MACON, Ga. — Macon-Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones says he's over budget this year. Tuesday, the commission approved adding $100,000 to the coroner's office budget, particularly for storage fees of corpses.
Mayor Lester Miller and Coroner Leon Jones say the office is over budget mainly because of unclaimed bodies, meaning families have not claimed their loved ones or do not want to.
"Families are not claiming their loved ones," Jones said.
In some cases, those relatives don't want to claim them. Jones spoke of a phone conversation he had with a deceased woman's relative.
"I said, 'I'm sorry to tell you, but your grandma has passed.' His exact words were, 'I don't care what you do with her.' 'Excuse me?' 'I don't care what you do with her.' Click," Jones said.
Jones says typically they have about 20 unclaimed bodies a year. In 2020, they had 40.
Each of those they have to send to a funeral home for proper storage and the funeral home must get approval from the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) to cremate.
"Two, when they do claim them, they don't have money to have them buried or cremated," Jones said.
In those cases, the county still has to foot the bill for storing the bodies.
In all cases, that costs the county $100 a day at one of four funeral homes or crematorium in the county. Those include
"A couple of these have been in storage for a couple months," Miller said.
Mayor Miller mentioned one case where it cost the county roughly $6,000 to store a body for two months while a funeral home was waiting on DFCS to give them the green light on cremation.
Miller says those invoices add up. In 2020, the contractual storage cost $329,000. In 2019, $246,000. In 2018, it cost $344,000.
Mayor Miller proposed a plan to cut down the cost and save the county an estimated $200,000 a year.
"To have the coroner, after five days, notify our county attorney's office that they have someone who has not been claimed or have a John Doe situation, we would forward that to the court -- Bibb County Superior Court -- ask the judge to sign off on it, make us the next of kin, and then we can make the steps necessary to take care of the cremation," Miller said.
Jones added that he's also over-budget because of transporting bodies, particularly with gunshot wounds, to the GBI Crime Lab in DeKalb County. It's $350 to transport the a body to the DeKalb office, Jones said. In cases where a family doesn't have a funeral home in mind, the coroner's office has to pay someone to transport victims back to Bibb County. In situations like this, Jones says the transport costs taxpayers $700 to and from the GBI Crime Lab.
This is because the GBI Medical Examiner's Office in Macon closed in October. Beginning in January of this year, they partially opened and are doing autopsies around three days a week. However, Jones says all victims with gunshot wounds must be transported to the GBI's DeKalb County office for autopsy.