After three busy weeks of activity, regulators took a break during the last four days. Published costs were only $213 million and paperwork burdens declined by more than 700,000 hours. A proposal addressing energy consumption at federal buildings led the week.                  

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 36
• New Final Rules: 52
• 2014 Significant Documents: 525
• 2014 Total Pages of Regulation: 62,552
• 2014 Proposed Rules: $81.8 Billion
• 2014 Final Rules: $73.4 Billion

AAF has catalogued regulations according to their codification in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR is organized into 50 titles, with each title corresponding to an industry or part of government. This snapshot will help to determine which sectors of the economy receive the highest number of regulatory actions.

The Department of Energy (DOE) issued a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking for improving the efficiency of federal buildings. The proposal only applies to new federal buildings and major renovations to existing buildings, but there are still substantial costs to the federal government. According to DOE, annualized costs could eclipse $570 million, but there would be operational cost savings through reduced energy consumption. Net benefits range from $104 million to $692 million annually.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published a final rule to improve 9-1-1 reliability. FCC estimated an increase of approximately 170,000 paperwork burden hours from just 1,000 respondents. FCC failed to estimate compliance costs.  

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $40 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 162.1 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 63.8 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $32.7 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 31,940 employees to file federal paperwork.

A Note on Paperwork

This week federal agencies published 366 notices. The Office of Management and Budget approved 76 paperwork requirements, decreasing the total paperwork burden by 689,535 hours.

There were no major changes in paperwork burdens, which is defined as an hourly burden increase or decrease of 500,000 hours or greater.  However, the Transportation Security Administration added more than 284,000 new burden hours.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $155.3 billion in compliance costs and has imposed 33.4 million in net paperwork burden hours. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2014.