CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

The 2015 Federal Register broke the 60,000-page barrier in a big way, with new rules ranging from tuna boats to Nicaraguan archaeology.

On to the data:

• Last week, 68 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 76 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 28 minutes.
• So far in 2015, 2,611 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,330 new regulations this year, far fewer than the usual total of 3,500-plus.
• Last week, 1,245 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,832 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 61,185 pages, the 2015 Federal Register is on pace for 78,043 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 21 such rules have been published so far this year, none in the past week.
• The total estimated compliance cost of 2015’s economically significant regulations ranges from $1.69 billion to $1.81 billion for the current year.
• 219 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2015, 427 new rules affect small businesses; 60 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• If you owe money to the Department of Labor, it has new procedures for garnishing your wages.
• The federal government has a Tuna Vessel Monitoring Program. It maintains it under the auspices of the Tuna Conventions Act of 1950, as amended in 2000.
• Sulfur content of fuels in Rhode Island.
• The dusky sea snake and three species of coral snake are now endangered species.
• A new regulation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991.
• Restrictions on importing archaeological artifacts from Nicaragua.
• The black pinesnake is now a threatened species.
• The Florida bristle fern is now an endangered species.

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.