Tracking Those Midnight - and Daylight - Regs

"Midnight regulations" are federal regulations proposed in the waning days of a presidential administration. As the Congressional Research Service report Midnight Rulemaking: Considerations for Congress and a New Administration states,  "at the end of every recent presidential administration involving a change in the party controlling the White House, the level of rulemaking activity by federal agencies tends to increase — a phenomenon often referred to as “midnight rulemaking.”

The "non-profit newsroom" site ProPublica has been tracking the Bush administration's midnight regulations. ProPublica has a tipsheet called How To Ferret Out Midnight Regs Yourself that describes the federal rulemaking process and links to the relevant government websites, and a chart humorously titled How the Sausage is Made. Both are helpful in understanding the regulatory process year-round. Of course, as the tipsheet warns, "the search engines for all of these Web sites can be cumbersome."

ProPublica also references the helpful OMB Watch web project, Regulatory Resource Center.

Not referenced but just as helpful is the government website RegInfo.gov with its graphical RegMap.