CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The number of this year’s new regulations zoomed past the 2,000 mark, though the pace is still slower than usual. This week’s new rules cover everything from mailboxes to macadamia tree insurance.
On to the data:
- Last week, 83 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 71 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and two minutes.
- So far in 2015, 2,029 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,231 new regulations this year, which would be several hundred fewer rules than the usual total of 3,500-plus.
- Last week, 1,285 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,586 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 47,080 pages, the 2015 Federal Register is on pace for 74,969 pages.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Nineteen 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 ranges from $1.32 billion to $1.41 billion for the current year.
- 169 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
- So far in 2015, 337 new rules affect small businesses; 51 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- A clarification of federal price controls for debit card interchange fees.
- Design standards for mailboxes.
- The Coast Guard issued 17 new regulations, mostly establishing safety zones around local events and determining when drawbridges may go up and down.
- Another Dodd-Frank regulation, this one involving swaps. It is 117 pages long.
- A correction to an earlier regulation for importing Unshu oranges from Japan.
- The federal government sells macadamia tree crop insurance.
- Energy usage standards for water heaters.
- 5,755 acres of critical habitat for the Vandenberg monkeyflower.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.