ST. PAUL — Grieving family members and friends walked up to a casket in an Edina funeral home only to find the wrong body.

That mistake, from last spring, is the most jarring in a growing number of complaints lodged by Minnesota families in their darkest moments. State officials say funeral homes, crematories and mortuaries are in dire need of more oversight — less than half of those facilities statewide have been inspected in the last two years.

“Laying out the argument for needing more inspectors, that would be a very good one to wake a legislator up,” Rep. Carolyn Laine, a Columbia Heights Democrat familiar with mortuary issues, said of the incident in Edina.

Gov. Mark Dayton is aiming to staff up the state’s mortuary science inspections to tackle those issues in his proposed budget. An additional $374,000 over the next two years, paid by raising licensing and other industry fees for funeral directors, would help inspectors meet the state law that all funeral facilities be inspected every other year.