This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

The new year is off to an eventful start. The midnight regulatory rush continues, with more than 2,100 Federal Register pages, despite a four-day work week, along with 51 proposed regulations and 52 final regulations. The final regulations range from “entities” to air conditioners.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 52 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 97 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours and 14 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 52 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 3,250 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,853 regulations.
  • Last week, 2,189 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,201 pages the previous week.
  • The 2017 Federal Register totals 2,189 pages. It is on pace for 132,813 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which accounts for skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set last year. The unadjusted count was 97,110 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Two such rules were published last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $6.1 billion to $12.3 billion.
  • Agencies have published 5 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • In 2017, 16 new rules affected small businesses; one of them is classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

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