There’s a move afoot on Capitol Hill to push back on the Labor Department’s expansion of the e-delivery safe harbor – and it’s bipartisan.
Congressmen Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Donald McEachin (D-VA) have reached out to their colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives, inviting them to join in “signing a letter to the Department of Labor expressing concerns about a recent proposal to allow default electronic dissemination of mandatory disclosures by administrators of certain pension benefit plans.”
The pair – who have now been joined by Reps. Westerman (R-AR), Bergman (R-MI), Brindisi (D-NY), Carter (R-GA), Cleaver (D-MO), Grothman (R-WI), Greg Murphy (R-NC), Rice (R-SC), Rutherford (R-FL), Schrader (D-OR), Thompson (R-PA), Veasey (D-TX) and Watkins (R-KS) – state that, while they understand the benefits of electronic communication, “defaulting to such a method would impose significant burdens upon many individuals,” citing issues accessing broadband in many rural and remote areas, and beneficiary concerns about “accessing their financial data on the internet.” Of course, several of those House members represent districts with large paper mill concerns.
Meanwhile, the Pension Rights Center has embraced an “Alice in Wonderland” theme, comparing it to sending participants down a “rabbit hole” to find retirement information.
On the other hand, in a Nov. 21 comment letter on the Labor Department’s proposed e-delivery rules, Reps. David Roe (R-TN) and Mike Kelly (R-PA), the lead Republican sponsors of the RETIRE Act, cited the consumer protections in the proposal, as well as the cost and access advantages to the medium – including reference to recent surveys that indicate that retirement plan participants have “near universal” internet access, and that more than 88% of participants indicate that they have used the internet on a daily basis.
Of course, even before the proposal was published, a consortium of consumer organizations, labor unions, rural advocates, and print communications industry organizations calling itself the Coalition for Paper Options – called on the Trump administration to reject a proposed rule by the Department of Labor allowing retirement plan fiduciaries to switch the current default delivery method for certain retirement plan disclosures from paper to electronic.
The proposal – which fulfills a key component of President Trump’s August 2018 retirement security Executive Order– would allow plan administrators who satisfy specified conditions to provide participants and beneficiaries with a notice that certain disclosures will be made available on a website. The proposal – and a request for (more) information on the subject – was released in late October.
The deadline for public comments was Nov. 22. And it appears that, as with most things these days, there will be a diversity of opinions.
