CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

There was no Bureau post last week since I was out of the country. Here are the up-to-date numbers; it was very much business as usual while I was away.

On to the data:

• Last week, 64 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 77 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 30 minutes.
• So far in 2014, 730 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,042 new regulations this year. This would be the lowest total in decades; this will likely change as the year goes on.
• Last week, 1,938 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
• Currently at 17,827 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for 74,280 pages, which would be the lowest total since 2009.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 10 such rules have been published so far this year, one of them in the past week.
• The total estimated compliance costs of 2014’s economically significant regulations currently ranges from $1.05 billion to $1.34 billion. They also affect several billion dollars of government spending.
• Sixty-nine final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2014, 158 new rules affect small businesses; 24 of them are classified as significant.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• This week’s economically significant rule is a set of new energy efficiency standards for refrigerators from the Energy Department. The rule estimates $184 million in conversion costs for manufacturers, and $250-271 million in annual “incremental equipment costs,” depending on which discount rate one uses.
• Another new energy regulation from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission implements new standards for verifying the reliability of generators.
• In Florida, the Coleman-Evans Wood Preserving Superfund Site is no longer on the list of Superfund sites.
• South Koreans are now allowed to export poultry products to the United States.
• Now that it’s 2014, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is allowing electronic submission of certain forms that distilled spirit producers are required to fill out.
• Mexican potatoes are no longer forbidden in the United States.
• The federal government maintains a Death Master File. A new rule clarifies who may access it.

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