CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 90 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is up from 61 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every hour and 52 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 411 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,261 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,975 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 11,554 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 90,110 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such rule was published last week, for a total of eight so far in 2013.
• The total compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $2.532 billion to $4.810 billion.
• So far, 42 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 75 final rules affect small business; eight of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• This week’s economically significant rule comes from the Education Department, and has to do with parental consent paperwork for children with disabilities. First-year costs of implementing the changes will cost at least $14.088 million, and as much as $41.144 million.
• New OSHA health and safety regulations for construction sites.
• A while ago, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned phthalate from children’s toys. It is now allowed to be used for components “not accessible to a child through normal and reasonably foreseeable use and abuse of such product.”
• On February 16, Sea World San Diego is putting on a fireworks show. For some reason, the Coast Guard instead of a local agency is establishing a safety zone in nearby waters.
• The FAA has issued new airthworthiness directives for Lindstrand hot air balloons. In all, the FAA issued 21 final rules last week.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.