CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

The number of new regulations topped 2,500 on the year, while the Federal Register added 1,853 pages to end the week just shy of the 55,000 mark.

On to the data:

• Last week, 64 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 62 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 38 minutes.
• So far in 2014, 2,521 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,561 new regulations this year. This would be the lowest total in decades; this will likely change as the year goes on.
• Last week, 1,853 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
• Currently at 54,872 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for 77,503 pages. This would be the 6^th-largest page count since the Federal Register began publication in 1936.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Twenty-nine such rules have been published so far this year, none 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.
• 206 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2014, 483 new rules affect small businesses; 70 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• The Georgia rockcress is not only a threatened species, it is the unwitting recipient of 732 acres of critical habitat.
• Fishing enthusiasts will be glad to know the season for red grouper fish has been extended for an additional 18 days.
• The Canada Lynx also lives in the United States. Its critical habitat has been revised to reflect its changing range.
• The Postal Service is making it a little easier for USPS Return Services products to qualify for Commercial Plus® pricing.
• The federal government has a Soybean Promotion, Research, and Consumer Information program. It is amending its regulations for soybean producers to request referenda affecting the program.
• Twenty species of coral are now listed as threatened, and 43 more species, after investigation, will not be listed as threatened or endangered.
• Two more plant species now listed as endangered, one as threatened. All three will receive critical habitat.
• New ground anchor regulations for manufactured homes.

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