This week, despite a measure to reduce costs and paperwork, regulators added $229 million in total regulatory costs. There were no rulemakings that monetized benefits. The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) final fracking rule led the week.                      

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 54
• New Final Rules: 58
• 2015 Significant Documents: 853
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 16,546
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $15.8 Billion
• 2015 Final Rules: $16 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.

BLM concluded a three-year rulemaking process, which included two bites at proposals, with a final regulation for fracking on federal and Native American lands. The rule adds $45 million in annual burdens, slightly higher than the original proposal’s cost. Curiously, the administration omitted a total or net present value cost. The original proposal imposed $376 million in long-term burdens, but the public is left guessing as to the total economic impact of the final measure.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed state implementation plan (SIPs) requirements for its fine particulate matter rule. The 136-page measure imposes roughly $5.8 million in annual costs and more than 97,000 paperwork burden hours.

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $43.8 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 163.5 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 65.6 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $33.3 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 32,826 employees to file federal paperwork.

A Note on Paperwork

This week federal agencies published 456 notices. The Office of Management and Budget approved 135 paperwork requirements, increasing the total paperwork burden by 8.3 million hours.

There was one major change in paperwork burdens, which is defined as an hourly burden increase or decrease of 500,000 hours or greater. The Department of Agriculture imposed an information collection requirement (ICR) that adds 7.4 million hours, while the SEC cut 60,200 hours from an existing ICR.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $31.9 billion in compliance costs and has imposed 16 million in net paperwork burden hours. Click here for our new comprehensive database of rulemakings promulgated from 2008 to 2015.