This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

Friday’s Federal Register was one of the year’s biggest, with 74 agency notices, 4 proposed regulations and 15 final regulations spanning 1,119 pages. New rules for the week range from almonds to tall ships.

On to the data:

• Last week, 67 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 88 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 31 minutes.
• With 2,313 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,592 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
• Last week, 2,560 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,581 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 56,392 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 87,565 pages. This would exceed the 2015 Federal Register’s all-time record adjusted page count of 81,611.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 22 such rules have been published so far in 2016, one in the last week.
• The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $3.99 billion to $6.19 billion.
• 179 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
• So far in 2016, 416 new rules affect small businesses; 68 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• In a new 55-page regulation, the EPA argues that airplanes “endanger public health and welfare.”
• Quality control for almonds.
• A correction to ceiling fan energy conservation testing requirements.
• Preventing collisions at sea.
• Which doesn’t include tall ships, which have their own new regulation.
• The Lepidium papilliferum, a type of grass in Idaho, is now a threatened species.
• An attempt to help small businesses comply with vending machine calorie labeling requirements. Big businesses that can more easily absorb the costs must love how this rule affects their smaller competition.
• Hunting birds that migrate.
• A correction to a recent rule about commercial HVAC equipment.
• Do not import archaeological artifacts from Syria.
• Accessibility rules for cable TV user interfaces.
• The Acuña Cactus and the Fickeisen Plains Cactus are now endangered species.
• A 280-page regulation jointly issued by the Labor and Education Departments concerning “Unified and Combined State Plans, Performance Accountability, and the One-Stop System Joint Provisions.”

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