Can anyone name top agency in count of restrictive regs?

The leader in a new measure of regulatory activism is—can anyone guess?

While suspense builds, a description of the tracking mechanism is in order.

Called RegData, it’s a new database of regulatory statistics for federal agencies developed by Patrick A. McLaughlin, Omar Al-Ubaydli, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Arlington, Va.

Still under beta testing, RegData analyzes the text of federal regulations to, according to its web site, “create novel and objective measures of the accumulation of regulations in the economy overall and different industries in the United States.”

Text analysis distinguishes the system from other measures of regulation, some of which count pages in the Federal Register and others, new rules.

RegData bases results directly on content of the Code of Federal Regulations. And it assesses the applicability of regulatory text to specific industries.

A newer version of the new database, RegData 2.0, enables users to examine regulatory text according to the agency, commission, or administration that created it.

Using RegData 2.0, McLaughlin compared the regulatory restrictions promulgated by specific federal agencies in 2012 with those issued 10 years earlier.

It measured restrictions by searching text for words “likely to create a legally binding obligation to take some action or prohibition from doing so.” The words were “shall,” “must,” “may not,” “prohibited,” and “required.”

Agencies are those identified in an Office of Management and Budget classification system.

The leader created 87,000 restrictions in 2012, 32,000 more than the runner-up, the Internal Revenue Service. The leader’s restriction count in 2002 was 65,000.

And the leader, in both 2012 and 2002, is the Environmental Protection Agency.

Of course, everyone probably guessed that.

Here’s what’s impressive: Those top scores didn’t come from the whole EPA. They included restrictions only in the hyperactive agency’s air-quality programs. The study treated restrictions imposed under other EPA programs, such as water and pesticides, as though they originated in separate agencies.

Segmentation is a way to make at least something about EPA manageable.

(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Aug. 22, 2014; author’s e-mail: [email protected])