This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

The number of new final regulations this year passed the one-thousand mark. While many of the new rules are delays or repeals of older rules, additional regulations range from organic poultry to elasmobranchs.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 59 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 48 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 51 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 1,045 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 2,871 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,853 regulations.
  • Last week, 973 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,060 pages the previous week.
  • The 2017 Federal Register totals 22,259 pages. It is on pace for 61,152 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 112 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • In 2017, 213 new rules affected small businesses; 38 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.