CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

It may have been a short work week because of the holidays, but regulators still found the time to add nearly 2,000 pages to the Federal Register. With two work days to go in 2013, it stands just 280 pages, or one average day, short of last year’s hefty total of 78,961 pages.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 74 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 71 new final rules the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 16 minutes.
  • All in all, 3,619 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,648 new final rules.
  • Last week, 1,953 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 78,681 pages. This year’s Federal Register is already the 5th largest in its 78-year history.
  • At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 79,313 pages, which would be good for fourth 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 40 so far in 2013.
  • The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $6.42 billion to $11.83 billion.
  • So far, 325 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
  • So far this year, 709 final rules affect small business; 103 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

  • The Small Business Administration’s job is to give preferential treatment to some types of businesses over others. It recently revised its criteria for giving such treatment to construction companies and utilities.
  • During a busy travel week, the FAA published 14 new regulations. You can see them all here.
  • The federal government maintains a shrimp electronic logbook.
  • Possibly in an effort to improve avian survival rates, the Fish and Wildlife Service requires waterfowl hunters to use non-toxic ammunition.
  • If you grow walnuts in California, the Agricultural Marketing Service is raising its assessment rate on your crop.
  • The federal government has a Softwood Lumber Board. If you would like to join it, here are the membership requirements.

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