CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

In a week like any other, new regulations hit the books for everything from tax delinquents to the electromagnetic spectrum.

On to the data:

• Last week, 75 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 80 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 15 minutes.
• So far in 2014, 2,239 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,543 new regulations this year. This would be the lowest total in decades; this will likely change as the year goes on.
• Last week, 1,987 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
• Currently at 48,550 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for 76,819 pages. This 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. 26 such rules have been published so far this year, three of them in the past week.
• The total estimated compliance costs of 2014’s economically significant regulations currently ranges from $7.62 billion to $10.87 billion. They also affect several billion dollars of government spending.
• 181 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2014, 417 new rules affect small businesses; 60 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• This week’s economically significant rule is a 141-pager from the EPA on water cooling at power plants. Its expected annual cost is between $274.9 million and $297.3 million.
• Between hurricanes and oil spills, it’s been a rough decade for the Gulf Coast region. In 2012, the federal government established a trust fund to aid with ongoing recovery efforts, into which more than $650 million has been deposited. On Friday, the Treasury Department issued an interim final rule for how that trust fund will operate. Gulf County, Florida, for example, will receive precisely 6.743202298 percent of funds going to Florida. Even though “this rule may have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more,” it somehow escaped the “economically significant,” designation, though it was tagged under the broader definition of “significant.”
• For a fee of just $26, the U.S. Coast Guard will document your vessel.
• The FCC is setting up an incentive auction for broadcast tv spectrum. This could be a big one for the tech sector, potentially in a very good way if politics stays out of it.
• Since 1985, the federal government has had a Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board. A new regulation adjusts the Board’s representation.
• New labeling requirements for touting the energy efficiency of air conditioner, heat pumps, and furnaces.
• The Florida leafwing butterfly and the Bartram’s scrub-hairstreak butterfly are now endangered species. They are also receiving 10,561 acres and 11,539 acres, respectively, of critical habitat.
• The IRS offers rewards for ratting out tax delinquents.
• The Agricultural Marketing Service is decreasing its assessment rate on oranges and grapefruit from the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

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