CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 69 new final rules were published, down from 94 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 26 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 3,555 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,728 new rules.
• Last week, 1,287 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register, for a total of 74,185 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 76,956 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 46 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $24 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and two other rules have cost estimates that do not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
• No economically significant rules were published last week.
• So far, 333 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
• So far this year, 675 final rules affect small business; 94 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• The FAA added further requirements to its recent flight crew rest regulations.
• The Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule to revise the Spanish translation of its Used Car Buyers Guide. Here are links to the current version in English and in Español.
• The EPA published 19 final rules this week. They are listed here.
• Interested in opening a low power FM station? Under FCC regulations, you may apply for up to 70 different stations — but no more than three may be in the same market.
• The Lost River sucker, a type of fish from Oregon and California, is the unknowing recipient of critical habitat to the tune of 146 miles of stream and 117,848 acres of land. Its relative, the shortnose sucker, is getting 136 miles of stream and 123,590 acres of land.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.