This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
As the regulatory freeze marches on, most new regulations coming out are garden-variety FAA airworthiness directives and Coast Guard drawbridge and safety zone rules. Other new regulations range from sweet onions to a “tariff of tolls.”
On to the data:
- Last week, 59 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 43 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 51 minutes.
- Federal agencies have issued 507 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 3,091 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,616 regulations.
- Last week, 713 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 655 pages the previous week.
- The 2017 Federal Register totals 12,502 pages. It is on pace for 76,232 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 90 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
- In 2017, 125 new rules affected small businesses; 30 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- A tariff of tolls from the Department of Redundancy Department.
- The federal government has a Walla Walla Sweet Onion Marketing Committee. It is decreasing its assessment rate on select farmers.
- Surgical instruments for people with gastrointestinal and urological troubles.
- A drawbridge over Cape Fear.
- Rates for prison inmates’ phone calls.
- An FDA ozone regulation is not subject to the current regulatory freeze.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.