A congressional committee has opened an inquiry into disclosures that the Service Employees International Union’s largest California local and a related charity paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by relatives of its president.

Rep. George Miller (D-Concord), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, announced today that the panel would examine the spending practices of the local.

Small companies run by the wife and mother-in-law of the Los Angeles-based United Long-Term Care Workers president, Tyrone Freeman, received about $405,000 in 2006 and 2007 from the union and a charity he founded, according to news reports.

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