This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

In a Columbus Day-shortened work week, agencies issued more than 50 new regulations from deregulated TVs in TV commercials to POSTNET.

On to the data:

• Last week, 51 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 76 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours and 18 minutes.
• Federal agencies have issued 2,635 final regulations in 2018. At that pace, there will be 3,327 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,236 regulations.
• Last week, 1,337 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,208 pages the previous week.
• The 2018 Federal Register totals 51,717 pages. It is on pace for 65,300 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 85 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
• So far in 2018, 486 new rules affect small businesses; 22 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• General administrative regulations for the federal government’s crop insurance business.
• The POSTNET barcode is no more.
• How to grade pecans.
• The Federal Trade Commission has repealed a regulation on how televisions are portrayed in advertisements.
• Adjuvants.
• Subsistence hunting in Alaska.
• Alternative testing procedures for drinking water contaminants.

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