CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
As the Federal Register passed the 25,000-page mark, new rules for the week ranged from fluorescent lamps to disaffected youth.
On to the data:
- Last week, 65 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 53 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 35 minutes.
- With 1,077 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,244 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
- Last week, 2,035 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,496 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 26,003 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 78,323 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. Eight 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 $729 million to $1.56 billion.
- 85 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
- So far in 2016, 203 new rules affect small businesses; 30 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement issued a 152-page rule for drilling on the outer continental shelf. While the rule is economically significant, its included cost estimate is a miracle of opacity, so I am classifying it as the bare minimum of $100 million necessary for its economically significant classification.
- Microloans for farmers.
- How to test fluorescent lamp ballasts.
- The federal government holds a Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth competition.
- The northern long-eared bat will not be receiving designated critical habitat.
- Revisions to federal regulations for shipping grapes to charitable organizations.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.