CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

There are just eight more editions of the Federal Register remaining to be published this year. With new regulations in the last week covering everything from truck drivers to prisoners’ phone calls, it remains on pace to set the all-time record page count.

On to the data:

• Last week, 62 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 55 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 43 minutes.
• So far in 2015, 3,263 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,370 new regulations this year, fewer than the usual total of 3,500-plus.
• Last week, 1,998 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,307 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 79,229 pages, the 2015 Federal Register is on pace for 81,838 pages. This would break the all-time record set in 2010, with 81,405 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have estimated annual costs of $100 million or more. Thirty-four 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 $6.18 billion to $8.69 billion for the current year.
• Two hundred and ninety-two final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2015, 524 new rules affect small businesses, with  83 of them classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• Renewable energy regulations from the EPA will cost a minimum of $666 million by the end of next year. The maximum estimated cost is $1.924 billion. The difference is a factor of three, which roughly translates to: “We have no idea what this thing will cost.” At 100 pages long, each page of this regulation costs an average of somewhere from $6 million to $19 million.
• Some creative phrasing in a new 126-page regulation for truck drivers’ working hours. Instead of listing costs and benefits, the cost estimate lists “total benefits” of $3.01 billion and “net benefits” of $1.174 billion. Doing math that the government should have done itself, this rule will cost an estimated $1.836 billion.
• The Small Business Administration’s Director of Human Resources shall now be known as the Chief Human Capital Officer.
• The federal government sets the price for prisoners who make interstate phone calls.
• It also regulates heavy element content in wooden toys.
• New regulations for mounting your car’s license plate.
• The EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response will henceforth be known as the Office of Land and Emergency Management.
• Payment restrictions for telemarketers.

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