CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a short work week due to the Fourth of July holiday, but agencies still managed to issue new rules covering everything from stormwater to seatbelts.
On to the data:
- Last week, 50 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 137 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 14 minutes.
- With 1,859 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,548 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
- Last week, 1,293 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,051 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 44,693 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 85,292 pages. This would exceed the 2015 Federal Register’s all-time record adjusted page count of 81,611.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 19 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 $3.82 billion to $6.02 billion.
- 141 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
- So far in 2016, 354 new rules affect small businesses; 53 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- The EPA has decided not to regulate forest road stormwater discharges under the Clean Water Act “at this time.”
- Updated competitive bidding requirements for radio broadcasters applying for FCC authorization.
- The National Indian Gaming Commission is updating its civil violation penalties for inflation, as are the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement Office.
- A correction to a recent seat-belt regulation. Previously limited to cargo-carrying vehicles, the rule is now expanding to cover passenger-carrying vehicles.
- New IRS rule for how to calculate gains and losses in money market funds.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.