Two House Democrats have asked the Labor Department’s inspector general to investigate Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s handling of the ERISA Advisory Council, saying the secretary put the panel on ice even as it is meant to advise the department on pension, health care, disability and retirement issues.
Rep. Bobby Scott and Rep. Mark DeSaulnier said the secretary is supposed to call quarterly council meetings, but there were no quarterly meetings last year and none have been scheduled so far this year. One-third of the seats on the advisory panel are vacant, and the council has no executive director to handle daily operations.
The request lands at a moment when the department is already under scrutiny for how it has managed its advisory work. In 2024, Trump’s Labor Department pulled all Biden-era advisory council documents from the agency website, then restored them after a complaint, with no explanation for the reversal.
The ERISA Advisory Council was created by Congress more than five decades ago, and Scott and DeSaulnier said its job is not ceremonial. “The ERISA Advisory Council was established by Congress more than five decades ago with the statutory mission of providing technical expertise to the department regarding complex issues relating to health care, disability, and retirement plans that cover more than 155 million workers, retirees, and their family members,” they wrote. Those plans affect more than 155 million workers, retirees and family members, making the council one of the few formal channels for outside expertise on a law that touches nearly every American workplace.
The complaint also comes as Chavez-DeRemer is already facing the first ongoing investigation into a culture of sexual harassment at the Labor Department, including allegations involving her husband. Two of the four named complainants also went to the Executive Protective Service, which investigated the complaints but decided not to bring charges.
An outside ethics group said the department appears to have drifted away from its core job while leadership is absorbed by misconduct investigations, and argued that Congress needs to step in. It said oversight from Congress, rather than just from the department’s scandal-plagued inspector general, is urgently needed. For Chavez-DeRemer, the question now is not whether the council matters; it is whether her department will keep the body functioning at all.
