This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

Things remain slow on the regulatory front, with a large chunk of new rules being routine safety-zone and drawbridge scheduling regulations from the Coast Guard, and the EPA’s usual slew of air regulations. Other new rules of note range from boat engines to codfishing.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 63 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 67 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 40 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 794 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 3,008 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,853 regulations.
  • Last week, 995 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 986 pages the previous week.
  • The 2017 Federal Register totals 17,086 pages. It is on pace for 64,720 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 106 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • In 2017, 168 new rules affected small businesses; 36 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.