Category Archives: regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• The first full week of 2013 saw 52 new final regulations. This is up from 28 new final rules the previous, holiday-shortened week. This is down from
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation precisely every 2 hours and 28 — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 80 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 2,222 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,760 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 2,610 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 72,500 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such rule has been published so far in 2013.
• So far, 6 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 23 final rules affect small business; one of them is a significant rule.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• Last week’s economically significant rule comes from the Federal Transit Administration. It sets standards for how the agency evaluates major transit projects that seeking federal funding. The rule’s estimated economic impact is $250 million. This estimate primarily affects how federal money is spent, and not the total level of government spending. The estimate also says little about compliance costs. As such, we are scoring this rule as zero-cost in our running compliance cost tally.
• The Federal Trade Commission is updating its labeling requirements for appliances’ energy use.
• The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has declared that Livingston and Steuben Counties in New York are both free of the golden nematode, a pest that affects potatoes and tomatoes. As such, the agency is loosening its nematode policies in those counties.
• The same agency is also moving towards a national ID for livestock. Given the resistance the REAL ID Act for humans has faced, the Department of Homeland Security must be jealous of APHIS’ success.
• The FAA issued 19 new final rules, including noise certification standards for tiltorotors.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

This week in the world of regulation:

• It was a 3-day work week due to New Year’s celebrations, but agencies still managed to publish 28 new final rules. This is down from 54 rules the previous week, which was also shortened due to Christmas.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation precisely every 6 hours — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 28 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 2,333 new final rules.
• Last week, 850 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 76,434 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 70,834 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. No such rules have been published so far in 2013.
• So far, one final rule that meets the broader definition of “significant” has been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 4 final rules affect small business; none of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• The federal government has a United Soybean Board. A new regulation revises its representation requirements.
• The southern willow flycatcher is the unwitting recipient of 1,227 stream miles of critical habitat.
• The Drug Enforcement Administration is establishing codes for 26 synthetic drugs. They will all be classified as Schedule I drugs.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

Welcome to 2013. As of today, more than 400 new laws come into effect in states across the country. CNBC sums up a few of the weirder ones:

In 2013 in Illinois, motorcyclists will be able to “proceed through a red light if the light fails to change.” In Kentucky, releasing feral or wild hogs into the wild will be prohibited. And in Florida, swamp buggies will not legally be considered motor vehicles.

The Illinois motorcycle law may sound strange, but it actually makes a lot of sense in certain situations. Many traffic lights are triggered by sensors that detect metal. They work just fine for passenger cars, but motorcycles are small enough that it can be difficult to get them in a detectable position, meaning a light may potentially never change. Hopefully riders use their new powers wisely.

The article also points to an odd new Oregon law: if your business has a job opening, and you’re unwilling to consider unemployed applicants, you are not allowed to advertise the opening. This would seem to have rather obvious free speech issues, and is unlikely to survive a court challenge on First Amendment grounds.

All in all, state legislatures across the country passed 29,000 new laws in 2012.

At the federal level, a total of 3,706 new regulations hit the books in 2012, as Wayne Crews pointed out today. Now that the holidays are over, agencies have hit the ground running, publishing another 13 new rules in today’s Federal Register, the first issue of the new year. The rules cover topics ranging from soybeans to Rolls-Royce jet engines.

It’s already looking like a busy year for regulatory watchdogs.

This week in the world of regulation:

• It was a short week due to the Christmas holiday, but agencies still found time to publish 54 final rules in three working days. This is down from 68 rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 3 hours and 7 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 3,685 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,715 new rules.
• Last week, 984 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register, for a total of 76,434 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 76,741 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 46 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $24 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and two other rules have cost estimates that do 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.
• No economically significant rules were published last week.
• So far, 345 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
• So far this year, 692 final rules affect small business; 96 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• The Agricultural Marketing Service has revised its spearmint oil handling regulations.
• The Department of Homeland Security has two new rules revising its procedures for granting asylum.
• The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a rule on its rulemaking procedures.
• The federal government regulates the rail industry’s employee drug testing policies.
• If you’re a commercial shark fisherman, you should be aware of this new regulation.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

Over at the Daily Caller, I summarize my recent CEI Regulatory Report Card on the EPA. Recommended if you don’t feel like reading the entire document (though it is a mere six pages). Here’s a taste:

Transparency is the lifeblood of democracy. Washington needs more of it, especially in the all-too-opaque world of regulation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, is the most expensive federal regulatory agency. Its annual budget is fairly modest in Beltway terms, at a little less than $11 billion, but that’s not where the vast majority of its costs come from. Complying with EPA regulations costs the U.S. economy $353 billion per year — more than 30 times its budget — according to the best available estimate. By way of comparison, that is more than the entire 2011 national GDPs of Denmark ($332 billion) and Thailand ($345 billion).

That figure doesn’t come from the EPA, which last released such an estimate in 1990, but from the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Wayne Crews, who parsed through publicly available documents, cost estimates of economically significant regulations, and whatever else he could find. That so much effort was required is part of the problem.

Read the whole thing here. Note that two important pieces of EPA news have dropped since I wrote the piece: EPA head Lisa Jackson has resigned, and the overdue Unified Agenda, which contains forthcoming rules, was finally released the Friday before Christmas — timing which suggests the administration would like to minimize publicity of its contents.

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 68 new final rules were published, down from 69 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 28 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 3,623 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,728 new rules.
• Last week, 1,265 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register, for a total of 75,450 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 76,677 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 46 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $24 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and two other rules have cost estimates that do 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.
• No economically significant rules were published last week.
• So far, 339 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
• So far this year, 682 final rules affect small business; 94 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• If you own a citrus grove, you can buy crop insurance from the federal government. A new rule updates some of the program’s provisions.
• It may be December, but that isn’t stopping the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from issuing a new rule for fishing for summer flounder.
• Sometimes the federal government will switch from one contractor to another for a given service. When it does, its policy is to “require service contractors and their subcontractors under successor contracts to offer employees of the predecessor contractor and its subcontractors a right of first refusal of employment for positions for which they are qualified.” If the government’s reason for making a switch is performance-related, then this rule may well make doing so pointless.
• Americans are now allowed to import sand pears from China.
• If you were thinking of importing pig semen from Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, or Slovenia, read this regulation first.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

Transparency is in short supply in the world of regulation. How many rules does an agency have in the pipeline? How much will they cost? How much does the total stock of rules currently in effect cost, and how many are there? Some of these questions can’t be answered. The data for others are available, but scattered across different sources and dfficult to assemble.

There is a solution: each agency should have an annual regulatory report card that puts all this disparate information into one publicly accessible document. Agencies should already be doing this themselves, but aren’t.

That’s why, to set a good example, with plenty of help from my CEI colleagues, I put together just such a report card for the EPA. In it, you’ll find out that the best available estimate of the EPA’s total cost is $353 billion, which is more than Denmark’s entire 2011 GDP. You’ll also find out that the Code of Federal Regulations contains as many as 154,350 individual regulatory restrictions — just in the Title concerning environmental protection.

For all that important information and more, read the EPA Regulatory Report Card here.