CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

The government has been back in business for more than a week now, and the Federal Register is now reflecting it. Monday continued the slow shutdown pace, with just 1 regulation and 60 pages. Tuesday saw that spike to 16 regulations and 537 pages, and it has stayed elevated since. Friday’s Federal Register contained 27 new final regulations and 17 proposed regulations in its 329 pages. The pace of new rules is definitely above normal, but not like the deluge witnessed after the Gingrich-Clinton shutdowns, where 82 regulations were published in one day. A normal day has about 15 rules, and right now we’re seeing about 20. We’ll see what the coming week brings.

On to the data:

• Last week, 78 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 3 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 9 minutes.
• All in all, 2,950 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,613 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,792 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 63,942 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 77,225 pages, which would be good for fifth all time. The current record is 81,405 pages, set in 2010.
• 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, leaving the total at 34 so far in 2013.
• The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $6.53 billion to $11.93 billion.
• So far, 269 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 566 final rules affect small business; 79 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• The Energy department issued testing procedures for determining a television set’s energy efficiency. It also issued a similar rule for, among other things, urinals.
• The FAA had a busy week, issuing 18 regulations. You can read them all here.
• So did the EPA with 15 new regulations, including air quality rules for Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Rhode Island, Ohio, Idaho, Indiana, D.C., and Ohio again.
• The FDA issued a correction to its intrastate and interstate requirements for turtles.
• If you are planning on moving a citrus canker plant across state lines, read this regulation first.
• The Agricultural Marketing Service is suspending its apricot handling regulations in certain counties in Washington State. It is increasing the assessment rate in other counties.
• As part of the U.S.-Panama free trade agreement, certain tariffs are being lowered.
• Revised critical habitat for the Comal Springs dryopoid beetle, Comal Springs riffle beetle, and the Pack’s Cave amphipod.

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.