CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

The Federal Register topped the 60,000-page mark on Friday, and is on pace for the 6th-highest page count in its 79-year history. Along the way, new regulations cover everything from 5K races to how magnets work.

On to the data:

• Last week, 79 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 84 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and eight minutes.
• So far in 2014, 2,756 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,589 new regulations this year. This would be the lowest total in decades; this will likely change as the year goes on.
• Last week, 1,814 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
• Currently at 60,035 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for 78,171 pages. This would be the 6th-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. 33 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.
• 227 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2014, 527 new rules affect small businesses; 78 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• The 11th annual Fall Colors 5K Run & Walk is happening on October 5 in Joliet, Illinois. The federal government issued not one, but two regulations to adjust the schedules of when local drawbridges go up and down during the race.
• The Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute recently petitioned the Energy Department to reconsider its new energy efficiency standards for walk-in coolers and freezers, arguing that the rules are “neither technologically feasible nor economically justified.” The Energy Department is denying the petition.
• It’s official: the Rio Grande cutthroat trout is not an endangered species.
• Less stringent grading requirements for Valencia oranges.
• New quarterly reporting requirements for small breweries.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has updated its fishing regulations for Atlantic surfclams and ocean quahogs (which can apparently live for more than 500 years!).
• The IRS is requiring certain employee benefit statements to be submitted on “magnetic media.”
• New safety standards for magnet sets, which appear to cover the infamous Buckyballs office toy.
• Threatened status for certain populations of the yellow-billed cuckoo.

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