HOUSE FILE _____

BY  (PROPOSED COMMITTEE ON VETERANS AFFAIRS BILL BY CHAIRPERSON CHAMBERS)

A BILL FOR

An Act relating to interment rights of certain veterans and their spouses in cemeteries owned and controlled by governmental subdivisions.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF IOWA:

    Section 1.  Section 523I.304, subsection 7, Code 2011, is amended to read as follows:
   7.  A cemetery owned and controlled by a governmental subdivision shall adopt and enforce a rule allowing any veteran who is a landowner or who lives within the governmental subdivision to purchase an interment space and to be interred within the cemetery.

The rule shall also allow any veteran who purchases an interment space within the cemetery to purchase an interment space for interment of the spouse of the veteran and shall allow the surviving spouse of a veteran interred within the cemetery to purchase an interment space and be interred within the cemetery. For the purposes of this section, “veteran” means the same as defined in section 35.1.
EXPLANATION
   This bill requires that a governmental subdivision allow a veteran who purchases an interment space in a cemetery owned and controlled by the governmental subdivision to purchase space for the veteran’s spouse and for the spouse to be interred in the cemetery. The bill also allows the spouse of a veteran already interred within such a cemetery to purchase interment space for the spouse and for the spouse to be interred in that cemetery. Current law only allows a veteran to purchase an interment space for the veteran and for only the veteran to be interred within the cemetery.