CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

The federal government took Monday off for Columbus Day, but still managed to pack more than 50 new regulations into a short week.

On to the data:

• Last week, 52 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 three hours and 14 minutes.
• So far in 2014, 2,870 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,570 new regulations this year. This would be the lowest total in decades; this will likely change as the year goes on.
• Last week, 990 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
• Currently at 62,528 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for 77,772 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. 34 such rules have been published so far this year, one 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.
• 237 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2014, 546 new rules affect small businesses; 80 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• No Man’s Land Island, Massachusetts is no longer a restricted area, according to the FAA.
• The EPA is liberalizing its sulfur handling regulations for the state of Florida.
• The United States Postal Service has a legal monopoly on first class mail service. A new rule ”prohibits the Postal Service from taking certain actions that might provide it with unfair competitive advantages.” But the rule leaves most the obvious unfair advantage—monopoly—intact.
• New certifications for green federal buildings.
• The Coast Guard updated its policies for fireworks at Pittsburgh Steeler games.
• In light of the Supreme Court’s McCutcheon v. FEC  decision, the Federal Election Commission is removing its aggregate campaign contribution limit for donors to federal candidates.

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