CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 96 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is up from 93 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every hour and 45 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 1,688 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,582 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,616 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 37,643 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 78,423 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 14 so far in 2013.
• The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $5.68 billion to $10.29 billion.
• So far, 118 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 290 final rules affect small business; 25 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• Between now and September 7, there will be a number of fireworks shows in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The federal government is establishing a safety zone in Lake Michigan near the events.
• New fine particulate matter air quality standards in Missouri and Kansas, courtesy of the EPA.
• The EPA also issued new emission standards for petroleum refineries.
• The Defense Department, General Services Administration, and NASA have jointly adopted quotas for contracting with small businesses owned by women.
• The Farm Credit Administration is revising its liquidity requirements.
• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is revising its procedures for dealing with FOIA requests.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.