An Assembly committee chair has asked Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe to appear at a hearing next week to answer “questions and concerns” about proposed agency rules for election observers.

But Wolfe responded she will be out of town and two members of the commission will attend Tuesday’s hearing instead.

The proposed standards include restrictions on what observers can record, such as when someone deposits an absentee ballot. The proposed rules would also lay out when poll workers can have an observer removed.

Campaigns and Elections Chair Dave Maxey, R-New Berlin, said he wants to hear directly from Wolfe about the justifications for those proposals.

“I think we should be able to hear that and give WEC some guidance when it comes to administering these rules,” Maxey said.

Wolfe responded to Maxey that she and agency legal staff will be in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to speak at a meeting of election administrators from around the country and won’t be able to attend. But she added commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Dem appointee, and Don Millis, the previous chair and a GOP appointee, have accepted the invitation to be at the hearing. Wolfe added she would be “be very glad to have a call with you and other committee members in advance of February 4 to provide any information or answer factual questions.”

Maxey said in a statement after receiving the response that he was disappointed Wolfe won’t attend and the state deserves “to get answers from the department head, not people down the chain.”

The committee on Wednesday posted notice of Tuesday’s public hearing on the rules package.

Maxey also sent Wolfe a letter inviting her and any appropriate staff to attend the hearing and answer questions.Republican lawmakers previously sought to remove Wolfe from her position as the state’s top election official and criticized the Elections Commission last summer, when no one from the agency attended a Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules hearing to answer questions about proposed rules for absentee voting instructions.