CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

  • Last week, 71 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 83 new final rules the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 22 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
  • All in all, 2,314 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,704 new final rules.
  • Last week, 1,414 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 50,130 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 78,821 pages, which would be good for fifth all time. The current record is 81,405 pages, set in 2010. Three of the top four years have occurred since 2008.
  • 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 22 so far in 2013.
  • The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $5.78 billion to $10.39 billion.
  • So far, 203 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
  • So far this year, 432 final rules affect small business; 55 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

  • The town of Conneaut, Ohio, sits on Lake Erie, near the Pennsylvania-Ohio border. Because its beach very much resembles Normandy’s in France, history enthusiasts have annually reenacted the D-Day invasion since 1999. For this year’s August 16-17 reenactment, the Coast Guard issued a detailed regulation establishing a safety zone surrounding the area of amphibious invasion and vintage airplane flyovers. Local authorities should decide how to protect local events.
  • In June, the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration jointly published regulations for heavy-duty engines and off-road vehicles. Because of adverse comments received, the agencies are rescinding parts of the rule.
  • The EPA published its annual standards for how much bio-fuels cars will be required to use in 2013.
  • The FCC is adjusting its forfeitures and fines for inflation.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.