CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a prolific week for the Federal Register, with more than 1,700 pages covering everything from real estate appraisal to water banks.
On to the data:
- Last week, 64 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 65 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 38 minutes.
- So far in 2015, 1,365 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of exactly 3,020 new regulations this year, which would be several hundred fewer rules than the usual total of 3,500-plus.
- Last week, 1,752 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,344 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 33,895 pages, the 2015 Federal Register is on pace for 74,989 pages.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Eleven such rules have been published so far this year, two in the past week.
- The total estimated compliance cost of 2015’s economically significant regulations ranges from $1.39 billion to $1.46 billion for the current year.
- 114 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
- So far in 2015, 235 new rules affect small businesses; 34 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- New electronic travel authorization rules from the Homeland Security Department meet the $100 million threshold, despite costing an estimated $22 million to $24 million per year. This is because the agency estimates the benefits from the new program will exceed $100 million per year.
- New Medicare rules will save an estimated $780 million in federal spending over fiscal years 2016-18, which also qualifies as economically significant.
- New minimum requirements for appraisal management companies, as part of the Dodd-Frank Act.
- The federal government runs a Water Bank Program. Native American tribal lands are eligible to participate.
- A 147-page EPA regulation for federal standards for state-level regulations.
- Mandatory greenhouse gas reporting, also courtesy of the EPA.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.