Monthly Archives: April 2013

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 67 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is up from 56 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and thirty minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 949 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,396 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,368 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 22,116 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 77,874 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. No such rules were published last week, for a total of 11 so far in 2013.
• The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $2.632 billion to $4.910 billion.
• So far, 77 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 166 final rules affect small business; 20 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• If you grow apricots in certain parts of Washington state, the Agricultural Marketing Service is lowering its assessment tax from $1.50 to $0.50 per ton. Washington farmers who grow cherries and pears are also having their assessments lowered.
• The Coast Guard regulates when the drawbridge in Rock Island, Illinois goes up and down. One would think that the city could manage this on its own.
• The FCC has revised its rules for wireless signal boosters.
• The Defense Department runs a homeless shelter program

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 56 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is down from 100 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 882 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,389 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,386 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 19,362 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 78,591 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such rule was published last week, for a total of 11 so far in 2013.
• The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $2.632 billion to $4.910 billion.
• So far, 72 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 158 final rules affect small business; 20 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• This week’s economically significant rule changes the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to save an estimated $158 million of government spending in FY 2013, and a total of $663 million over 5 years. Because this is government spending and not compliance costs, I am scoring this rule as zero-cost in our running compliance cost tally.
• New ambient air quality standards for Ohio from the EPA.
• The federal government has given the state of Oregon permission to give individuals permission to study landfills.
• The EPA has withdrawn a recent rule regarding greenhouse gas reporting. To the EPA’s credit, it cites adverse public comments as its reason for scrapping the rule. Regulatory commenters take note: you do make a difference.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.