This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The highlights from this week’s round of 36 proposed regulations and 72 final regulations range from licensing government inventions to the Department of Redundancy Department’s new rule for fishing in the “Bering Sea subarea of the Bering Sea”.
On to the data:
- Last week, 72 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 70 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 20 minutes.
- Federal agencies have issued 897 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 3,115 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,281 regulations.
- Last week, 1,161 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,202 pages the previous week.
- The 2018 Federal Register totals 16,150 pages. It is on pace for 57,366 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set in 2016.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such rule has been published this year, none in the last week.
- The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations is $115 million.
- Agencies have published 30 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
- In 2018, 145 new rules affect small businesses; 7 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- The boundaries of Savannah, Georgia’s port.
- A minor change in the rules for trading endangered species.
- Updated leave policies for federal workers.
- Next time you go fishing in the “Bering Sea subarea of the Bering Sea”, try not to catch any sablefish.
- The Surface Transportation Board is updating its section of the Code of Federal Regulations to reflect new legislation passed three years ago.
- Licensing government-owned inventions.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.