This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

The regulatory freeze continues. A wide range of recent rules, big and small, have been delayed until late March. The Federal Aviation Administration stayed busy with its usual stream of safety regulations for various aircraft, but other than that it was a quiet week. Delayed regulations from the last week range from tuna to bees.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 55 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 57 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours and three minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 368 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 3,286 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,853 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,098 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 683 pages the previous week.
  • The 2017 Federal Register totals 10,440 pages. It is on pace for 93,215 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts 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. Seven such rules have been published this year, none in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $6.8 billion to $13.2 billion.
  • Agencies have published 35 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • In 2017, 50 new rules affected small businesses; 6 of them are 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.