CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

The Federal Register broke the 30,000-page barrier last week, with new regulations covering everything from baked beans to e-cigarettes.

On to the data:

• Last week, 58 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 71 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 54 minutes.
• With 1,206 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,242 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
• Last week, 2,170 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,893 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 30,066 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 80,823 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. 11 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 $1.21 billion to $2.20 billion.
• 97 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
• So far in 2016, 238 new rules affect small businesses; 37 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• New federal regulations for grading canned baked beans.
• The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s new 62-page regulation for “customer due diligence” at financial institutions will have first-year costs of $370 million to $520 million. It will also have significant IT costs, making it a job creator in that industry, though not necessarily a value creator for people.
• The FDA issued a 134-page regulation for electronic cigarettes.
• And a 10-page rule for calculating tobacco taxes.
• The SEC continues to implement the JOBS Act; CEI’s John Berlau has plenty to say on the subject, and has suggestions for further reforms.
• 65,038 acres of land and 20.3 miles of river are now designated critical habitat for the Oregon spotted frog.
• A new OSHA rule for tracking workplace injuries and illnesses will cost the private sector an estimated $10.7 million per year.
• The federal government has a Commodity Credit Corporation. It issued a new rule for its Environmental Quality Incentives Program.

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