CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Last week’s batch of new rules covered everything from fluorescent lights to postage rates.
On to the data:
- Last week, 59 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 77 new regulations the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 51 minutes.
- So far in 2015, 254 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 2,540 new regulations this year, which would be roughly 1,000 fewer rules than the usual total.
- Last week, 1,445 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,583 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 6,885 pages, the 2015 Federal Register is on pace for 68,850 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. Two such rules have been published so far this year, none in the past week.
- The total estimated compliance cost of 2015’s economically significant regulations is $630 million for the current year.
- Twenty-one final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
- So far in 2015, 54 new rules affect small businesses; five of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- Minor changes to the National Organic Program.
- Loosening of certain poultry regulations.
- Drivers in several counties in southern Maine will now have to buy more expensive reformulated gasoline.
- New energy efficiency testing rules for fluorescent light ballasts.
- You may now fly through certain parts of Ethiopian air space if you like.
- The Federal Reserve is exempting savings and loan companies with less than $500 million of total assets from its Regulation Q, which covers capital reserve standards for financial institutions.
- The Postal Service is changing some of the prices for its domestic and international services.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.