CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

In another busy week, federal agencies issued new regulations for everything from tomato plants to airplane seats.

On to the data:

• Last week, 76 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 84 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 13 minutes.
• So far in 2015, 2,543 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,329 new regulations this year, far fewer than the usual total of 3,500-plus.
• Last week, 1,832 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,301 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 59,940 pages, the 2015 Federal Register is on pace for 78,456 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 21 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 $1.69 billion to $1.81 billion for the current year.
• 213 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2015, 413 new rules affect small businesses; 57 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• Federal regulations allow the importation of live tomato plants from Mexico, which U.S. growers  then re-plant in a greenhouse—but there are rules for which “growing media,” also known as soil, are allowed.
• New overtime pay rules for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s employees.
• Federal regulations require truck drivers to use electronic devices to track their working hours. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a new rule for editing the records.
• The military macaw and the great green macaw, both native to Central and South America, are now endangered species.
• The Dakota skipper, a type of butterfly, is the recipient of 19,903 acres of critical habitat in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The Poweshiek skipperling, another butterfly species, is receiving 25,888 acres of critical habitat in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, both Dakotas, and Wisconsin.
• 23 plant and animal species in the Mariana Islands, Micronesia, and other nearby islands are also getting endangered status.
• Airlines must publish seat size information online so young parents will know which types of baby carriers will work on their flights.

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