The Small Business Administration has rescinded the promise it made in 1971 to take public comment on its loan and grant rules, and it priced the comment writing it will no longer read at $4,311 a year

$4,311. That is what the Small Business Administration reckons the public's comment writing is worth to the public, in a year, across every rule it makes about loans, grants, benefits and contracts.

The figure appears in the cost-benefit section of a final rule filed at a quarter to nine on Friday morning that removes 13 CFR 101.108 and reserves the section. That regulation is the reason SBA has taken public comment on rules the Administrative Procedure Act never required it to take comment on.

Fifty-five years of it

The Administrative Procedure Act carves matters out of its notice-and-comment requirement: agency management, personnel, public property, loans, grants, benefits and contracts. For an agency that mostly makes loans and grants, that carve-out is most of the portfolio.

In August 1971 the Administrator published a notice saying SBA would waive the exemption and follow section 553 anyway. It was codified in December 1974, redesignated in 1996, and by then the text was a question and an answer. "Has SBA waived any of the public participation exemptions of the Administrative Procedure Act?" it asked. "Yes."

How the number is built

The agency counted 33 proposed rules between 2021 and 2025. It put the cost of answering comments at 40 hours of a GS-13 Step 5 in Washington, which at a 2026 salary of $138,024 is $2,654, multiplied by 1.6 for benefits and overhead, giving $4,247 a rule. Its own saving comes out at $28,029 a year.

The public side uses 20 hours of comment drafting per rule at the 2024 average American hourly wage of $32.66. That produces $4,311. Add the two and the total is $32,340, which is the annualised net saving the rule claims under Executive Order 14192.

Work the second figure backwards and it rests on the same run rate as the first. Thirty-three rules over five years is 6.6 a year, and $4,311 divided by $32.66 is 132 hours. So the agency's estimate of everything the public will write, on every SBA rule touching loans, grants, benefits and contracts, in a year, is 132 hours of one person's time. That derivation is this publication's, not the document's, which gives only the assumptions and the total.

Issued the way it describes

The rescission itself took no comment. SBA relied on 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(A), treating the rule as a general statement of policy and, alternatively, as a rule of agency organisation, procedure and practice. It skipped the 30-day delay under 553(d) on the ground that the rule relieves a restriction. It is effective the day it publishes, which is Monday.

The Office of Management and Budget called it a significant regulatory action and reviewed it. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs found it is not a major rule. No regulatory flexibility analysis was prepared, and the reason given is that one is only required where notice and comment is required.

What the agency says about the risk

The document does not pretend there is no cost. It states that there may be disbenefits if public comments offer information and suggestions that improve SBA's regulations, and it judges those disbenefits minor because the agency can still ask for comment case by case whenever it thinks the benefits exceed the costs.

It also records that a narrower option was on the table. SBA considered keeping the policy, or replacing it with a procedural commitment limited to certain programmes, and chose full rescission for what it calls a clearer legal and operational baseline.

Kelly Loeffler signed it.