An Act to repeal 165.88 (3m) (d); to amend 165.88 (4); to create 165.88 (3t) of the statutes; Relating to: grants for technical colleges to provide mapping data to law enforcement. (FE)
AB298 would expand Wisconsin’s school safety mapping grant program to include technical college districts. Under current law, the Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety awards grants to school boards and private school governing bodies so they can create and submit interactive critical mapping data for school buildings to law enforcement and the Office of School Safety. This bill adds a new grant category for technical college district boards, allowing them to apply for funding to produce similar site-specific mapping data for technical college buildings.
The bill also specifies how the mapping data must be used and what it must contain. The data must be compatible with platforms used by local, state, and federal public safety officials, must not require additional software purchases, and should include information useful to first responders such as building numbers, floors, suite designations, room numbers, and other relevant location details. The Office of School Safety would accept applications from the president of the Wisconsin Technical College System Board, working jointly with district boards and local law enforcement agencies, and the Department of Justice would continue to report annually on grants and expenditures, now including the new technical college grant category.
AB298 would amend Wisconsin Statutes section 165.88 by creating a new subsection for technical college mapping grants, repealing an existing subdivision, and updating the DOJ annual reporting requirement to cover grants under the new program. In practical terms, it would extend state-funded school safety mapping support beyond K-12 schools to technical colleges, affecting technical college district boards, the Office of School Safety, local law enforcement agencies, and the Wisconsin Technical College System Board. The bill would not create a new criminal offense or regulatory scheme, but it would change how state grant funds may be used for emergency preparedness and campus security planning.
The available context suggests the bill was framed positively as a school and campus safety measure, with an emphasis on improving first responder situational awareness and emergency response. There is no recorded committee transcript or vote history in the provided material, so there is no direct evidence of debate, amendments, or partisan division. The bill ultimately failed to pass pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 1, indicating it did not complete the legislative process despite its safety-oriented purpose.
The main policy issue appears to be whether state grant funding for interactive critical mapping data should be expanded from K-12 schools to technical colleges. Potential points of contention include the cost of producing and maintaining the mapping data, whether the Office of School Safety should administer another grant stream, and whether the required compatibility and no-additional-software provisions are feasible for all districts. Because no committee discussion or votes are provided, it is not possible to identify specific legislators or stakeholder groups that opposed or supported the bill, but the likely debate would center on funding priorities, implementation burden, and the balance between security benefits and administrative costs.