This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

The majority of new regulations coming out are still of the routine procedural variety—Coast Guard safety zones for fireworks shows, Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directives for airplanes, Environmental Protection Agency clean air regulations for various states, and the like. But other new rules from the last week affect everything from convict labor to Peruvian history.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 67 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 61 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 31 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 1,296 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 2,945 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,853 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,344 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,258 pages the previous week.
  • The 2017 Federal Register totals 26,794 pages. It is on pace for 60,896 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. Nine 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 132 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • In 2017, 266 new rules affected small businesses; 42 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.