Ronald Reagan Presidential Dollar For 2016

I had no idea there was ever a controversy over this. Since the program started, I thought it was always clear that the dollars would skip over any living presidents and continue on to Reagan and anyone else who passes away two years before program end. Were there really two camps arguing over how to interpret the end date? Or was it a slightly underinformed member of congress writing to the mint and the mint mollifying him while doing the courtesy of not pointing out they were already going to mint the coin anyway?

When the programs started the mint put a listing on their website of all the presidents and when their dollar would be issued That listing ended with Nixon (At the time Reagan was dead but Ford was still alive. Clearly they did NOT intend to skip over living presidents to get to Reagan. When Ford died they revised the list to add Ford but still did not list Reagan. After mid 2014 when Carter was still alive and could no longer get a coin because he would not meet the two years being dead requirement the mint still showed the list ending at Ford. Reagan was not added to the list until a day or two before the announcement that he would get a coin. So obviously they changed their interpretation of the law.