CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

It was another slow week with just 40 new final regulations and 37 proposed regulations, but new rules still cover everything from solid waste to washing machines.

On to the data:

• Last week, 40 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every four hours and 12 minutes.
• So far in 2015, 78 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 1,773 new regulations this year, roughly half the usual total.
• Last week, 1,119 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
• Currently at 2,586 pages, the 2015 Federal Register is on pace for 58,773 pages, which would be the lowest page count since 1992.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such rule has been published so far this year, none in the past week.
• The total estimated compliance cost of 2015’s economically significant regulations is $477 million for the current year.
• 8 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2015, 13 new rules affect small businesses; 4 of them are classified as significant.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• The EPA issued a 122-page definition of “solid waste.”
• The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has indefinitely delayed a rule restricting imports and interstate movement of certain fish.
• In line with the recent move to open up U.S.-Cuba relations, the Industry and Security Bureau and the Foreign Assets Control Office issued new rules to begin implementing policy changes.
• The Mexican wolf is now an endangered species. An additional regulation covers an experimental population in Arizona and New Mexico intended to increase the Mexican wolf’s range.
• The FAA is withdrawing a rule which increased “the allowed use of aviation training devices” instead of actual flights for certain airplane pilot certification programs.
• In 2008, the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act ended the Export Enhancement Program and the Dairy Export Incentive Program. Seven years later, the Commodity Credit Corporation issued a rule to remove regulations related to those programs from the Code of Federal Regulations.
• New energy efficiency standards for commercial washing machines.
• Mining machines are now required to have proximity detection systems.

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