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Proposed Rule Impact and Obligation Analysis
River reads a proposed rule from its definitions outward, then checks the class you are in against the respondent count the agency already published.
River reads a proposed rule from the definitions outward. The definitions in the amendatory text decide who every other section reaches, and they are routinely wider than the summary at the front of the notice. Then comes the cross-check almost nobody runs. The agency's paperwork section has to carry a specific, objectively supported estimate of burden, which means a respondent count. When that count exceeds the classes the summary names, the extra classes are covered and the agency has already said so.
From there every numbered instruction becomes a row: the section it changes, the class that section binds, the operative words quoted, and the date, where a date exists. A proposal often has no compliance date at all, because the agency is asking for comment on what the transition should be. That absence is the opening. The register is built so you can answer with a number rather than a position, and file it before the window closes.
Built for the analyst, the compliance lead and the trade-association counsel who have to answer two questions before the deadline: does this reach us, and what would it cost. Once the rule is final and you are implementing it, the compliance register with owners and dates takes over. This one works like an evidence extraction table for legal text, with the source discipline of a documented search strategy, beside the other research tools and workspace packs.
The class the summary never names
Take a 94-page proposed rule on specialty-coating recordkeeping. The summary says it covers manufacturers of specialty coatings, and the agency has 340 of those registered. The definition of facility in the amendatory text reaches anyone who blends, tints or repackages a coating for resale. Four pages earlier, in the paperwork section, the agency puts its respondent count at 2,190. That is 340 manufacturers plus 610 contract blenders plus 1,240 repackagers, and two of those three classes appear nowhere in the summary.
That number is not a throwaway. An agency putting a collection of information into a proposed rule has to say so in the preamble and route comments to OMB. It also has to invite comment on whether its burden estimate is accurate, including the methodology and the assumptions behind it. So the count is both a coverage admission and a target. At 41 hours per respondent per year the total is 89,790 hours, and a two-site blender can check that against its own operation in an afternoon.
The obligations themselves are in the last six of the ninety-four pages, as nineteen numbered instructions. Eleven create or change a duty, two remove one, one reserves a section, and five touch definitions or cross-references. Nine of the eleven would start on the effective date and two twelve months later, and the proposal asks for comment on whether twelve months is enough. A comment that answers with the hours it costs a blender is a comment the agency has to address.
How it works
Send the notice
The Federal Register document or the docket number, plus what your organisation actually does.
Read the definitions
Every definition the rule adds or revises, held against the work your organisation performs.
Check the count
The agency's own respondent estimate, split by class, compared with what the definitions reach.
Build the register
One row per obligation, with its citation, who it binds, and the date it starts.
What you get
- A coverage determination quoting the definition that reaches you, or the one that does not
- The agency's respondent count broken into classes, checked against what its definitions cover
- The obligation register as a Sheet, one row per duty with the instruction that creates it
- Each instruction applied to the section's current text, so you see the before and after
- The burden estimate translated into hours for your operation, which is what a comment argues with
- Every question the agency asked for comment on, listed with the instruction it belongs to
Common questions
How do I know whether a proposed rule covers my organisation?
From the definitions in the amendatory text, not from the summary. The definition is the operative one; the summary is a description of it written for a general reader, and the two often disagree. The run quotes both, says which class you fall in, and names the specific words in the definition that put you there or keep you out.
Why does the agency's respondent count settle it?
Because the agency has to publish a specific, objectively supported estimate of the burden its rule creates, and it cannot do that without deciding how many entities respond. That count is a coverage position taken in writing, months before anyone argues about it. Where it exceeds the classes the summary names, the extra classes were always in scope.
Where in the notice do the obligations actually live?
In the numbered amendatory instructions at the back, each naming the section it changes. The Federal Register's drafting handbook requires that amendatory instructions only detail the proposed changes, with the reasoning kept out of them. That is why they are terse, why they are skipped, and why they are the part worth reading.
It is only a proposal. Why analyze it now?
Because the comment period is the last point at which the text can still change, and because you cannot argue for a longer transition without knowing what the work costs. A comment quoting the instruction number and offering replacement wording gets a response in the final rule. A comment objecting to the direction gets counted, alongside everything else in the docket.
What if the rule is already final?
Then the question shifts from whether you are covered to who inside the organisation owns each duty and by when. The compliance register is built for that, and it handles the split between effective and compliance dates. Bring this analysis to it, since the coverage determination and the register rows carry straight over.
What about a state agency, or a regulator outside the United States?
The structure holds anywhere rulemaking is published. A consultation paper carries a draft instrument, a state register carries proposed regulatory text, and an impact assessment carries the equivalent of a respondent count. The method is the same: find the operative text, read its definitions first, and build the register from those rather than from the explanation.
What do I get back?
A Doc holding the coverage determination and what the rule changes section by section, and a Sheet holding the obligation register with a citation, a covered class and a date on every row. Both reopen when the final rule publishes. Evidence extraction does the same job for research literature.
Proposed Rule Impact and Obligation Analysis
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