Assembly committee advances bill to exempt projects from DSPS plan review

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A state Assembly committee voted on Wednesday to advance a bill that would exempt certain construction projects from state plan-review requirements in hopes of preventing a backlog of reviews that surfaced in 2019 from returning.

The Assembly’s Committee on Regulatory Licensing Reform voted 6-3 to advance the proposal to the full Assembly. The bill passed on a party-line vote with all committee Republicans coming out in favor of it and all Democrats voting against.

The proposal, from Sen. Roger Roth, R-Appleton, would raise the value threshold that determines when construction projects are subject to review by the Department of Safety and Professional Services. More than a dozen Republicans have signed on to support the bill. No Democrats have registered in favor.

The bill would exempt certain single-story buildings with less than 200,000 cubic feet of space from plan reviews, as well as buildings with fewer than 25 plumbing fixtures. That would be from the current standard of 15. The exemption, however, wouldn’t apply to churches, apartments, factories or various other buildings. The bill, meanwhile, would require contractors to pay plan review fees up front.

The bill was introduced in the state Senate in March, closely mirroring a previous proposal introduced in the last legislative session only to fall short of reaching Gov. Tony Evers’ desk. The proposal received a public hearing in the Senate’s Committee on Labor and Regulatory Reform in April, but hasn’t yet gone up for a vote.

Proponents of the bill say it would prevent a backlog of construction plan reviews that emerged at DSPS in 2019 and caused many contractors to wait eight weeks or more for the agency to sign off on work.

The DSPS, however, has argued the state’s Commercial Building Code Council is better suited to carry out changes to the agency’s plan review procedure. The agency has also made a number of internal changes — including requiring online submissions and randomly assigning reviews. That change took effect permanently earlier this year. Follow @natebeck9