This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

The Federal Register continues its slow march to the 20,000-page mark, but is still on pace for lowest page total since 1993. As usual in recent weeks, most new rules involved standard annual updates, Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directives, and Coast Guard safety zones. Noteworthy new rules range from radio station ownership policies to Flugzeugbau gliders.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 43 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 51 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours and 54 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 888 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 2,921 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,853 regulations.
  • Last week, 760 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 978 pages the previous week.
  • The 2017 Federal Register totals 18,824 pages. It is on pace for 61,922 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 108 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • In 2017, 193 new rules affected small businesses; 37 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.