CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

In a very cold, holiday-shortened week, federal agencies issued 40 final and 33 proposed regulations covering everything from lithium-ion batteries to small fish in Oregon.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 40 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 57 new regulations the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every four hours and 12 minutes.
  • So far in 2015, 351 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 2,581 new regulations this year, which would be roughly 1,000 fewer rules than the usual total.
  • Last week, 1,118 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,341 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 9,353 pages, the 2015 Federal Register is on pace for 68,772 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. Three 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-nine final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
  • So far in 2015, 75 new rules affect small businesses; nine of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

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