This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Veterans Day made it a short work week, but agencies still filled more than 1,300 Federal Register pages with rules ranging from trailer tires to water heaters.
On to the data:
- Last week, 47 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 71 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours and 35 minutes.
- With 3,245 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,721 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
- Last week, 1,357 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,704 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 79,380 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 91,033 pages. This would exceed the 2010 Federal Register’s all-time record adjusted page count of 81,405.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 29 such rules have been published so far in 2016, none in the last week.
- The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $23.5 billion to $36.2 billion.
- 254 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
- So far in 2016, 552 new rules affect small businesses; 95 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- Reporting requirements for registered sex offenders who work as military contractors.
- Energy conservation standards for commercial packaged boilers and commercial water heating equipment.
- Money laundering in North Korea.
- Tire regulations for trailers.
- Packaging and labeling requirements for viruses, serums, and toxins.
- The Indian Affairs Bureau runs a Tribal Transportation Program.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.