After 118 days of waiting for publication, EPA finally published its coal ash rule in the Federal Register. At $23 billion in total costs and plenty of legal battles to fight, perhaps EPA had its reasons for delaying publication. For the week, regulators added $24.2 billion in costs, $571 million in annualized costs compared to $236 million in benefits, and more than 2.7 million in paperwork burden hours.                     

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 56
• New Final Rules: 57
• 2015 Significant Documents: 888
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 21,638
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $18.8 Billion
• 2015 Final Rules: $39.3 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.

EPA’s coal ash rule was easily the biggest regulation of the week. During the course of the next 100 years, total costs are projected to eclipse $23 billion, with roughly $500 million in annual costs. Benefits are actually less than costs, at $236 million annually. AAF reviewed the coal ash rule when the White House released it last December. We noted that Texas, Louisiana, and California could bear the highest costs.

The Department of Interior proposed its “Blowout Prevention” rule this week, a measure designed to reduce the likelihood of another Deepwater Horizon accident. Although there will be some upfront costs, on net the proposal should save oil and natural gas operators more than $62 million annually. AAF reviewed the proposal here.    

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

There were 488 notices published in the Federal Register this week. The Office of Management and Budget approved 67 paperwork requirements, decreasing the paperwork burden hours by 824,264 hours.  There was one major change to existing paperwork requirements (defined as an hourly burden increase or decrease of 500,000 or greater).

The largest increase in paperwork burden hours imposed by an information collection requirement (ICR) was 444,790 hours from CMS. The largest decrease in paperwork burden hours from an ICR was 822,326 hours from the Department of Education.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $58.1 billion in compliance costs ($39.3 billion in final rules) and has imposed 18.7 million in net paperwork burden hours (4.8 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.