Wisconsin killed the bill that would have counted condo sprinklers — and the garage inspection bill too
Wisconsin killed the bill that would have counted condo sprinklers — and the garage inspection bill too
2026-09-21 · Wisconsin · Legislation · Did not pass
Wisconsin has no statewide condominium building-safety inspection law. In the 2025-26 session two bills approached that gap from different directions. One asked a state agency simply to count how many buildings have sprinklers. It never got a hearing. The other would have required periodic inspections of parking structures. It got a hearing and was never voted on.
The counting bill
2025 Assembly Bill 661 (LRB-5446/1) was introduced November 19, 2025 by Representatives Sinicki, Moore Omokunde, Madison, Taylor, Goodwin, Brown, Clancy, DeSmidt, Miresse, Neubauer, Roe, Stroud, Stubbs, Vining, Emerson and Palmeri, with Senate companion SB 643 introduced November 14, 2025 by Senators L. Johnson, Drake, Carpenter, Larson, Smith and Wall.1
The whole bill is two sections. The definition:
“In this subsection, ‘specified residential building’ means an apartment building, rowhouse, town house, or condominium that consists of 8 or more attached dwelling units, as defined in s. 101.61 (1), and that has a dwelling unit located 2 or more stories above grade plane in height. ‘Specified residential building’ does not include a facility licensed under ch. 50.”
And the ask:
“Audit required. The department of safety and professional services shall perform an audit to determine whether automatic fire sprinkler systems, as defined in s. 145.01 (2), are installed on specified residential buildings. The department of safety and professional services shall submit a report on the audit under this paragraph to the governor, the chief clerk of each house of the legislature, and the appropriate standing committees of the legislature under s. 13.172 (3) by September 30, 2026.”
That is the entire substance. No retrofit mandate, no inspection duty on owners or associations, no new standard — an inventory. It carried $75,000 in fiscal 2025-26 and $75,000 in 2026-27, and 2.0 project positions ending June 30, 2027.
Neither the Assembly nor the Senate history contains a “Public hearing held” entry. Both bills died on March 23, 2026 with the line “Failed to pass pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 1.”
The inspection bill that did get a hearing
2025 Assembly Bill 175, with Senate companion SB 155, would have created Wis. Stat. § 101.1115 requiring periodic inspections of parking structures. It was introduced April 15, 2025 by a notably bipartisan group — Representatives Maxey, Donovan, Madison, Dittrich, Hong, Joers, Miresse, Moore Omokunde, Mursau, Ortiz-Velez, Palmeri, Phelps, Rodriguez, Sinicki, Udell, Kirsch and O'Connor, cosponsored by Senators Tomczyk, Wanggaard, Larson and Spreitzer.
A public hearing was held May 8, 2025. Assembly Amendment 1 was offered October 13, 2025. No vote was ever taken. Both bills died March 23, 2026.
Parking structures matter to Wisconsin associations for a structural reason: in a condominium, the garage is almost always a common element, so its condition, its inspection and the cost of its repair fall on the association and are distributed across every unit.
A third related bill, 2025 Senate Bill 641 — allowing local ordinances regulating fire detection, prevention and suppression in public buildings containing dwellings — also died on March 23, 2026.
What Wisconsin law contains instead: nothing
Chapter 703's table of contents runs from § 703.01 to § 703.38 and contains no structural-inspection, milestone-inspection, façade-inspection or structural-integrity-reserve-study section. Nothing was added in 2025-26.
That absence compounds with a second one. Wisconsin's reserve statute, § 703.163, is opt-out by design and sets no funding level — and § 703.163(10) provides that “[n]o declarant, unit owner, association, or director, officer, manager, or employee of an association is liable in connection with the establishment or termination of, or decision not to establish or terminate, a statutory reserve account or for any deficiencies in the statutory reserve account that relate to the determination of amounts to be assessed for reserve funds.”2
So Wisconsin requires neither the inspection that would identify a structural problem nor the reserve that would fund fixing it, and immunises the funding decision.
Where the inspection pressure comes from instead
Two sources, neither of them Wisconsin law.
The mortgage market. Fannie Mae's Full Review examines the association's budget, reserve funding, insurance, delinquencies, litigation, special assessments and inspection reports, and its Selling Guide page for that review no longer references the lighter Limited Review process — consistent with reports that Limited Review was retired for established condominium projects in August 2026. A Wisconsin project that has never commissioned an inspection has nothing to produce.
Litigation. A 2018 inspection report documenting rot, siding, flashing, sheathing and framing problems became the central document in a published 2024 Wisconsin decision on whether a condominium association's water-intrusion liability was insured. Inspection reports date a board's knowledge, and they are discoverable.
Our Wisconsin condo safety inspections page covers what state law does and does not require, and reserve studies covers the funding side.
Who was pushing, and who was not
The lobbying registry on AB 661 records the City of Milwaukee registered For, reporting 99 hours of lobbying effort for January–June 2026, and the Wisconsin Realtors Association registered as Other. The Community Associations Institute's Wisconsin chapter listed AB 661 and SB 643 as monitored and filed no registry position.
A municipality spending 99 hours on a bill that would only have produced a report, and that bill still not reaching a hearing, is the clearest measure of where condominium building safety sat on the Wisconsin agenda this session.
What to watch next
The 2026 Joint Legislative Council study-committee slate — district attorney funding, cryptocurrency, floodplain restoration, artificial intelligence in health care, veterans' benefits, cemeteries and state-tribal relations — contains nothing on housing, condominiums or building safety, so there will be no interim study to hand the 2027-28 Legislature a drafted package. Both bills would have to start over from a cosponsorship memo in December 2026 or later.
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