Late Friday night, ABC 7 reported on yet another unearthed 2003 document relating to Comptroller Dan Hynes and the Burr Oaks grave-robbing scandal.  Here's what we know so far:

In 2003, while cleaning a back section of Burr Oak Cemetery that the Department of Transportation had expressed interest in purchasing, groundskeepers discovered human remains in what were supposed to be empty grave plots.  A pattern developed when officials opened other "pre-need" plots only to discover more wood and bone fragments.  We know this because ABC 7's Chuck Goudie obtained an internal Burr Oak memo penned by CEO Slivy Cotton on November 1, 2003 that references the discoveries.  (Capitol Fax has posted it for download here.) In the memo, Cotton reports on one groundskeeper's theory:

[The groundsman] had heard that the former owners believed that if a grave was more than 50 years old, they could reuse it. They would often dig up any leftover fragments and dump them in the back.

The memo includes the following "speculation" on the part of Cotton:

We believe that the former owners routinely buried over or cleared out old graves for new business. We believe that they sold Pre-Need to families in sections they knew were full with the expectation that people would continue to be double buried in these old graves

As we now know, that is exactly what had happened under the previous owners.  But it took six more years for the full truth to come out.

Cotton's 2003 memo was sent in preparation for a meeting with Comptroller Dan Hynes' office two weeks later. In the letter to her colleagues, she expressed concern that the comptroller's office might "dig" into the situation once they learned about the human remains.

This brings us to the internal comptroller memos that Goudie first reported on Friday (also available for download via Capitol Fax).  They indicate that, in a November 19, 2003 meeting with various comptroller officials, Cotton disclosed "the discovery of human remains at Burr Oak Cemetery."  But in a follow-up letter to Cotton, the comptroller's office declined to further investigate the issue, stating that they "only handle[] the licensure and regulation of cemeteries."  They ultimately referred her to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. 

In a Friday night press release, the Quinn campaign lambasted Hynes for not taking action at the time:

[I]nstead of taking action to prevent the gruesome discoveries of 2009, Lucina instead claimed the Comptroller’s office had no authority to regulate private cemeteries. In responding to the face-to-face report of human remains found improperly buried at Burr Oak Cemetery, the head of the Comptroller’s Cemetery Care division shuffled off responsibility, directing the concerned executive to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency instead.

So why, in testimony to Governor Quinn’s Cemetery Oversight Task Force Hearing on Sept. 10, 2009, did Hynes insist: “Not only did we do our job, but we took immediate action in the situation of Burr Oak. We immediately moved to revoke the license.”

Even after more than five years, 22 separate complaints, and 12 different staff visits by Hynes employees to the cemetery site, Comptroller Hynes claimed his office had no indication that there was any problem at Burr Oak Cemetery.

Capitol Fax got this response from Hynes himself:

“I think what’s being attempted here [by the Quinn campaign] is to turn this into something where [the cemetery owners] revealed to us that there was a major scandal going on, [instead of] that they had unmarked graves and they were trying to deal with it.

“This smoking gun that Chuck Goudie thought he had was, in my opinion, validating what I’ve been saying all along. That they came to us, and we said we don’t deal with burial grounds…

“We don’t have the benefit of hindsight. [At the time it appeared that this was] a one hundred year old cemetery and they came upon some remains…”

The Quinn campaign, in turn, has circulated evidence that the comptroller's office has repeatedly dealt "with burial grounds."  For instance, this August 2001 Orlando Sentinel article references the "quick action" taken by the comptroller's office after flooding unearthed remains at an Illinois cemetery:

While officials in Florida were slow and cautious in dealing with Bellevue's problems, regulators in Illinois acted swiftly when irregularities emerged at a Timmer-owned cemetery outside of Chicago.

In 1999, flooding at Mount Glenwood Memory Gardens South exposed bones and damaged several headstones. Illinois officials ordered Timmer to correct the problem immediately, and state inspectors visited the property three to four times a month for the next year, said Karen Craven, spokeswoman for Illinois Comptroller Daniel W. Hynes, the state regulator.

The campaign also cites an October 5, 2009 press release from the comptroller which highlights actions he took against a cemetery owner for "failure to maintain a cemetery":

Comptroller Hynes successfully revoked the license of Springdale Cemetery owner Larry Leach on September 21 in Peoria - the state's first-ever license revocation based on the failure to maintain a cemetery.

"Our action in Peoria sends a clear message that this administration intends to vigorously pursue irresponsible cemetery ownership," Hynes said.

Apparently, the discovery of human remains at Burr Oak did not amount to a red flag for Hynes and his deputies in 2003.

Quinn is expected to address the issue at a get-out-the-vote rally this morning.  We'll have more on his comments later.

Full Disclosure: The SEIU Illinois State Council, which sponsors this website, has endorsed Pat Quinn in the Democratic primary for governor.