This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

clams

The big news this week was the release of the 2018 edition of CEI’s annual report on regulatory costs, “10,000 Commandments”. Agencies continued to provide fodder for next year’s edition with 49 proposed regulations and 61 final regulations last week, ranging from clam insurance to wireless signal boosters.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 61 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 72 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 45 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 958 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 3,111 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,281 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,827 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,161 pages the previous week.
  • The 2018 Federal Register totals 17,977 pages. It is on pace for 58,367 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 33 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • In 2018, 154 new rules affect small businesses; 8 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

For more data, see “10,000 Commandments” and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.