CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 60 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is down from 69 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 48 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 667 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,290 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,323 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 16,574 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 81,245 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. No such rules were published last week, for a total of 10 so far in 2013.
• The total compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $2.632 billion to $4.910 billion.
• So far, 57 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 110 final rules affect small business; 15 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• The Federal Railroad Administration amended a recent rule establishing a toll-free number so the public can report unsafe conditions at railroad crossings.
• In a nice bit of irony, the federal government sets standards for financial management courses for people in debt.
• The FAA revised its rules for de-icing planes.
• The Transportation Department has made a few changes to time zone boundaries.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.