CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
As the 2016 Federal Register passed the 10,000-page mark, new regulations cover everything from salmon to wine.
On to the data:
- Last week, 67 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 45 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 31 minutes.
- With 443 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 2,914 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
- Last week, 1,415 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 940 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 10,036 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 66,027 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, none in the last week.
- The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $402 million to $1.24 billion.
- 45 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
- So far in 2016, 89 new rules affect small businesses; 19 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- Tax increase for pistachio growers in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
- Tax decrease for date growers in Riverside County, California.
- Credit regulations for low-income housing.
- Dividend payment rules for the Federal Reserve’s capital stock.
- Introducing the new Lamorinda winemaking region.
- Commercial Zones at the U.S.-Mexico border.
- 2,300 miles of river are now a designated critical habitat for the Lower Columbia River coho salmon, and another 2,031 miles of river are now critical habitat for the Puget Sound steelhead fish.
- There will be a referendum in August to decide whether the federal government will continue its Softwood Lumber Research, Promotion, Consumer Education and Industry Information Order.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.