Lawmakers advanced a bill this week to buy time for Wisconsin construction projects blindsided by a state agency’s abrupt implementation of a new commercial building code.
The Assembly on Tuesday passed, on a party-line 54-41 vote, AB450, pushing the launch of the massive code revision to April 1.
The Evers administration in September delayed the launch, originally set for Oct. 1, by a month, but project developers said that wasn’t long enough even to allow architects to read the new code and make the substantial revisions the new code demands.
“Some of the plans for commercial buildings have been in process for months, sometimes years,” said the author of the six-month delay, Rep. Will Penterman (R-Hustisford), during debate Tuesday, “and it’s not fair to them, and it makes no sense, for why they should have to go back to the drawing board and redo their plans to comply with the new building code that was just arbitrarily implemented.”
The Evers administration’s Department of Safety and Professional Services first attempted the code revision in 2023, saying it would add no costs to buildings, a claim lawmakers and the building industry said was ridiculous. The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Review of Administrative Rules blocked the revision.
But the Legislature’s power to hold up objectionable regulations was stripped away by the Wisconsin Supreme Court this summer, and the Evers administration moved swiftly to implement regulations that lawmakers objected to. The DSPS announced in July that all building projects would have to comply as of Oct. 1.
The bill to delay that until April 2026 is now under consideration by the Senate. For it to take effect, it will require the signature of Gov. Tony Evers, who has not indicated whether or not he would sign — but who did approve the code revision and who urged other bureaucracies to swiftly pass regulations the Legislature objected to.
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