YESTERDAY
YESTERDAY
Wednesday, March 15, 2006; Page A17
The Federal Register, the bible of federal rules and regulations, celebrated its 70th birthday.
It all began in 1936 with a 16-page register that included rules on the new Social Security system and trade practices for buttons on clothes, and led off with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's order that specified new boundaries for the Cape Romain migratory bird refuge, acquired by the U.S. government in Charleston County, S.C.
 Which President signed the bill establishing the Smithsonian Institution? A. James K. Polk B. Zachary Taylor C. Franklin Pierce D. James Buchanan  
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It has grown with the bureaucracy, from publishing 2,620 pages that first year to printing almost that many pages a week. More than 75,600 pages of rules and regs were published in 2004.
The register has been published daily -- Monday through Friday, except federal holidays -- and without interruption since its first edition on March 14, 1936. Nothing has stopped the presses, said Bruce R. James, public printer of the United States and head of the Government Printing Office, which produces the register in conjunction with the National Archives. "Not war, not snow, nothing," he said.
Congress passed legislation in 1935 creating the Federal Register because there was "no real place to capture the work of what the agencies were doing," James said.
It is available free at 1,300 public and research libraries, or by mail subscriptions that started at $10 a year and now cost $929.
Internet access came along in the 1990s, bringing the ins and outs of government's often mind-numbing rulemaking process to even more of the public. As a result, the number of paid subscribers has fallen from 35,000 to fewer than 2,000 today, James said. More than 100 million Federal Register documents are viewed annually over the Internet for free.
Agencies submit proposed rules for publication in the register. After a period for public comment, usually 60 days, final rules that carry the force of law may be published.
As for the Cape Romain bird refuge, 70 years later it consists of 64,229 acres devoted to the preservation of barrier-island and salt-marsh habitat for more than 337 species of birds. It offers the largest nesting rookery for brown pelicans, terns and gulls on the South Carolina coast, as well as the largest nesting population of loggerhead sea turtles outside Florida. The refuge also has helped bring back the endangered red wolf.
-- Associated Press
