CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Back to business as usual this week, with new regulations covering everything from Taiwanese orchids to student pilots.
On to the data:
- Last week, 58 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 56 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 54 minutes.
- With 275 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 2,855 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
- Last week, 1,371 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,096 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 6,400 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 66,666.66 pages. The 2015 Federal Register had an adjusted page count of 81,611.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Four such rules have been published so far in 2016, one in the last week.
- The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $402 million to $1.24 billion.
- 32 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
- So far in 2016, 62 new rules affect small businesses; 14 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- Ethical conduct rules for Department of Homeland Security employees.
- The DEA classifies several kinds of synthetic marijuana (five in total) on par with heroin.
- Federal safety standards for Maine’s (and only Maine’s!) state government employees.
- Certain Taiwanese orchids may now exist in the United States.
- A correction to student pilot application rules.
- Federal regulations for telephone numbers.
- And your cable box’s user interface.
- Tax increase for kiwi growers in California.
- Another government attempt to revitalize AM radio.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.