This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

Hurricane Florence, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault allegation, and a ten percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods dominated the news. Meanwhile, regulatory agencies issued new rules ranging from LED lamps to diabetic truckers.

On to the data:

• Last week, 69 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 26 minutes.
• Federal agencies have issued 2,409 final regulations in 2018. At that pace, there will be 3,273 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,236 regulations.
• Last week, 1,351 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,312 pages the previous week.
• The 2018 Federal Register totals 47,896 pages. It is on pace for 65,077 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. Five such rules have been published this year, none in the last week.
• The running compliance cost tally for 2018’s economically significant regulations is a net savings ranging from $348.9 million to $560.9 million.
• Agencies have published 78 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
• So far in 2018, 434 new rules affect small businesses; 21 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• Collecting checks.
• Been working on the railroad all the live-long day? Here’s a correction to the Federal Railroad Administration’s work-hours recordkeeping requirements.
• Summaries of rights under the Fair Credit Act.
• An energy labeling rule from the Federal Trade Commission, of all agencies.
• Confirmation of an effective date for listing Black No. 4 food coloring.
• You may now carry an unloaded crossbow through a national park, but only if there is no other viable route to where you’re going. A new regulation has the details.
• Import restrictions, but not necessarily commercially related: archaeological artifacts from Cambodia.
• Rural call completion.
• As if being diabetic isn’t hard enough on its own, sufferers face special regulatory obstacles to becoming truck drivers.
• Lightning protection standards for airplane fuel tanks.
• Restricted percentages for Michigan tart cherries.
• Energy conservation standards for LED lamps.
• A regulation for crowdfunded aid for Hurrican Florence victims.

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.