CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Despite nearly 60 new regulations and more than 1,300 Federal Register pages, regulations remain on a below-average pace this year.

On to the data:

• Last week, 58 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 two hours and 54 minutes.
• So far in 2014, 1,147 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,186 new regulations this year. This would be the lowest total in decades; this will likely change as the year goes on.
• Last week, 1,345 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
• Currently at 26,798 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for 74,439 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. Fifteen such rules have been published so far this year, none of them in the past week.
• The total estimated compliance costs of 2014’s economically significant regulations currently ranges from $1.77 billion to $2.14 billion. They also affect several billion dollars of government spending.
• Ninety-seven final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2014, 235 new rules affect small businesses; 32 of them are classified as significant.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• The EPA issued new rules for burning wood in Washington State.
• Also in Washington State are new handling regulations for potatoes grown there.
• The Treasury Department is issuing sanctions related to the situation in Ukraine.
• The Fish and Wildlife Service is establishing a “nonessential experimental population” of wood bison in Alaska.
• Kentucky glade cress is now considered a threatened species, and is receiving approximately 2,053 acres of critical habitat.
• The Salt Creek tiger beetle‘s previously designated critical habitat has been revised. It covers approximately 1,110 acres.

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