This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

It was a busy week, with Friday’s Federal Register alone containing 52 final regulations and 809 pages. At its current pace, this year’s Federal Register would exceed 90,000 pages for the first time. New rules for the week range from injurious crayfish to painkillers.

On to the data:

• Last week, 116 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 73 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 27 minutes.
• With 2,848 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,747 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
• Last week, 2,047 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,801 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 69,137 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 90,970 pages. This would exceed the 2010 Federal Register’s all-time record adjusted page count of 81,405.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 25 such rules have been published so far in 2016, none in the last week.
• The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $4.42 billion to $6.62 billion.
• 213 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
• So far in 2016, 497 new rules affect small businesses; 83 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• A runway in Alaska is being renamed.
• The DEA is classifying three substances as Schedule I. Cato’s Jason Kuznicki recently wrote about what that means.
• A correction to a recent passport regulation.
• If you’re a doctor who prescribes opioid-based painkillers, here are new reporting requirements for how much you prescribe and to how many patients.
• Rules for opening new power plants, or in Energy Department parlance, “Electric transmission facilities.”
• A three-page definition of the term “healthy.”
• “Because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received adverse comment, we are withdrawing the direct final rule titled, ‘Technical Correction to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter,’ published on August 11, 2016.”
• The Big Pine partridge pea, wedge spurge, and sand flax are all now endangered species. Blodgett's silverbush is now a threatened species. All four are plants native to Florida.
• Loosened packaging requirements for oranges and grapefruit, but only if they’re grown in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande Valley.
• The eastern massasauga rattlesnake is now a threatened species.
• 49 new endangered species in Hawaii.
• 11 new injurious species, including ten fish and one crayfish.

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