CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 66 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is down from 86 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 32 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 1,101 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,464 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,307 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 24,940 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 76,976 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. No such rules wre published last week, for a total of 12 so far in 2013.
• The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $5.58 billion to $10.19 billion.
• So far, 84 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 202 final rules affect small business; 20 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• If you’re a dairy farmer from the Northeast, you need be more than just a good caretaker for your cows. You practically need to be a lawyer.
• The federal government sets the schedule for a drawbridge in Portland, Oregon that spans the Willamette River.
• Commercial driver’s license applicants in certain states no longer need to report out-of-state convictions in certain other states.
• New rule from the EPA regulating open burning in Oregon under the Clean Air Act.
• The federal government has a Processed Pear Committee.
• Revised wage controls for immigrant workers under the H-2B visa.
• If you grow Irish potatoes in Colorado, be aware of new handling regulations.
• Critical habitat designated for desert buckwheat.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.