Concealed carry licenses from other states will continue to be recognized in Wisconsin after lawmakers granted an extension for an emergency rule at a committee meeting Tuesday.  

The Republican-controlled Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules gave the state’s Department of Justice an extra 60-day expansion in a bipartisan 6-4 vote to continue recognizing concealed carry licenses issued by other states through May 28. The administrative rule would have expired March 29. 

Brian O’Keefe, administrator for DOJ Division of Law Enforcement Services, said Wisconsin currently recognizes 29 states and two territories whose permit process requires similar background checks to those the state’s permit process requires. 

O’Keefe said DOJ is asking for the extension to finish out the current permanent rules process after the committee last November made changes to training requirements for concealed carry licenses. 

“We couldn’t continue to look at things the same way with how we review the applications as far as training,” O’Keefe said. 

O’Keefe said DOJ has handed out almost 87,000 permits since the law was enacted last year and has received almost 100,000 mail applications for permits. 

Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, questioned parts of the emergency rule, which would not require the same training that Wisconsin requires for permitting as the rule only relates to background checks. 

“So, under reciprocity we require only background checks,” Risser said. “For state residency, we require background checks and training. So it’s true, is it not, that under this reciprocity agreement we’re letting people come from out of state and have concealed weapons without the training requirements that we have in Wisconsin”? 

The committee also approved an emergency rule giving the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission a 60-day extension to continue union recertification elections through June 11. Commission Chairman James Scott said the group needed the extension to complete recertification because it could not finish on time. 

He said 179 of 207 school district unions whose contracts have come due have pursued recertification. Unions will have to recertify annually under legislation made last year, Scott said. 

However, Rep. Fred Kessler, D-Milwaukee, raised the question of whether the committee can vote on either of the measures since, as of Friday, neither party has a majority in the Senate.

Because former Sen. Pam Galloway, R-Wausau, resigned on Friday, neither party holds a majority in the Senate, so the structure of committees will have to change to reflect that balance, Kessler said. He said if a Democrat replaced one of the three Republican senators on the committee, the committee may not have passed the emergency rule for concealed carry rule. 

However, Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, said during four previous times when neither party had a majority in the House, the makeup of the committee has not changed. He said because of statuary requirements, the committee’s members are appointed until January 2013, and Senate rules probably could not overrule state statute. 

Co-chair of the Committee Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, said because the hearing was posted before Galloway retired, it would not be affected by the change. She added by statute the committee consists of five senators. 

“I don’t know how you are going to change that so we have two and a half, two and a half,” Vukmir said. “So based on that, no, I’m not going to give you half of Sen. Grothman.”