CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

Just another week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 76 new final rules were published, up from 65 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 13 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 2,507 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,872 new rules.
• Last week, 1,687 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register, for a total of 52,597 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 78,178 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 29 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $16.5 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and a third cost estimate does not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
• One economically significant rule was published last week.
• So far, 250 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
• So far this year, 474 final rules affect small business; 64 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• Last week’s economically significant rule comes from the intimidatingly named Safety and Environmental Enforcement Bureau. New oil and gas drilling regulations for the outer continental shelf will cost an estimated $131 million per year.
• The State of New York wants to set its own odometer standards. They had to petition the federal government first.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.