CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Regulators had much to be thankful for during the short Thanksgiving work week, with new rules covering everything from grocery store ads to wireless signal boosters to greenhouse gas reporting requirements. The Federal Register also passed the 70,000-page mark on Monday.

On to the data:

• Last week, 58 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 59 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 54 minutes.
• So far in 2014, 3,254 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,551 new regulations this year.
• Last week, 1,236 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
• Currently at 70,994 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for 77,505 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. 39 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 $7.60 billion to $10.85 billion. They also affect several billion dollars of government spending.
• 259 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2014, 609 new rules affect small businesses; 89 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• The FCC is revising its rules for wireless signal boosters.
• Mental health care just got a little cheaper for veterans, thanks to a new co-pay rule from the Veterans Affairs Department.
• The federal government has decided to continue regulating grocery store advertisements.
• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has published car theft data for 2012. Take a look. Thefts are up from 2011, but the long-term trend is downward.
• In a bit of minor but necessary housekeeping, the Defense Department, General Services Administration, and NASA are removing obsolete Y2K compliance standards from their acquisition regulations.
• The EPA is revising its greenhouse gas reporting requirements for petroleum and natural gas systems.
• The FDIC is updating its stress testing regulations for financial institutions.

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