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On January 25, President Trump signed legislation to end a 35-day partial federal shutdown. The deal only lasts for three weeks, so another shutdown could happen if Trump and Congress don’t reach a longer-term deal by then.

During the partial shutdown, the Federal Register slowed to a crawl. Published every weekday, an average day’s edition consists of about 270 pages and contains a dozen or so new final regulations, plus proposed regulations, agency notices, and presidential documents. Compare this with 18 final regulations and 436 pages published all year through January 28.

What will happen now? Very little, for the first few days of normalcy. There is typically a 2-3 day lag between the time an agency submits an item to the Federal Register and when it runs. When that period ends, there will likely be a temporary flood to make up for rules and notices that agencies originally intended to publish during the shutdown, but could not. That busy period will likely last just a week or two, then it should be normal activity levels from there.

The big lesson is that even a month-long shutdown will have little impact on how much regulating agencies do. Rules that were scuttled during the shutdown will come into effect just the same, except a little later or with less advance notice.

It is also possible that agencies will simply not bother to publish some overdue notices or other documents, which could be a transparency concern. Hopefully this kind of evasion will be minimal, but it will be impossible to quantify.

Of course, the shutdown drama might not be over yet. Both sides are dug in on the border wall debate, and they are not guaranteed to reach a deal in the next three weeks. If they don’t, the process will repeat, and the Federal Register will again go through a lull and a flood. But the net consequences will be virtually nil.

There are lessons to be learned from shutdown battles, such as the wisdom of leaving something as important as air traffic safety in government’s bumbling hands. But as far as federal rulemaking is concerned, there is little to get worked up about, regardless of one’s policy views.

The partial shutdown ended on Friday, though only on a three-week deal. This likely will not show up in the Federal Register’s page and rule counts until mid- to late-week, given that it usually operates on a 2-3 day lag. Something else important happened last week: Venezuela’s dictatorship might be ending. It’s too early to cheer, but opposition leader Juan Guaidó, if his claim to legitimacy is successful, seems decidedly more liberal than the Chavez/Maduro regime. Time will tell.

Regulations that did appear during the week range from cockpit displays to crabbing vessels.

On to the data:

• Last week, 4 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 10 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 42 hours.
• Federal agencies have issued 16 final regulations in 2019. At that pace, there will be 236 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,367 regulations.
• Last week, 211 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 85 pages the previous week.
• The 2019 Federal Register totals 406 pages. It is on pace for 5,971 pages. The 2018 total was 68,082 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. No such rules have been published this year, with just one since last June 12. Six such rules were published in 2018.
• The running compliance cost tally for 2019’s economically significant regulations is currently zero. The 2018 total ranges from $220.1 million to $2.54 billion, depending on discount rates and other assumptions.
• Agencies have published no final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year. 2018’s total was 108 significant final rules.
• So far in 2019, 2 new rules affect small businesses; none of them are classified as significant. 2018’s totals were 660 rules affecting small businesses, 29 of them significant.

All of last week’s new final regulations:

• A Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directive for cockpit displays.
• The Labor Department is inflation-adjusting its penalties for civil offenses.
• Tracking workplace injuries.
• Alaskan crabbing vessels acting as fishing vessels.

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