For fifty five years the Small Business Administration made a promise it did not legally have to make. On August 31, 2026 it took the promise back, effective the same day, and it did not ask anyone first.
That last part is not a joke about irony. It is the rule working exactly as written.
What the SBA actually did
The final rule was published at 91 FR 55737 on August 31, 2026 under the title “Rescinding Unnecessary Notice and Comment Procedures.” It is signed by Administrator Kelly Loeffler, and its effective date is the day it was published.
Here is the background, in the agency’s own words. The Administrative Procedure Act normally makes an agency publish a proposed rule and let the public comment before it becomes law. But the statute carves out matters “relating to agency management or personnel or to public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts.”
Read that list again with the SBA in mind. Loans. Grants. Benefits. Contracts. That is not a corner of what the SBA does. That is the SBA.
So in 1971 the agency published a notice saying it would take public comment anyway, even on the stuff the law let it skip. It wrote that into the Code of Federal Regulations in 1974, and in 1996 rewrote it as 13 CFR 101.108, a question and answer that is almost charming to read now:
“Has SBA waived any of the public participation exemptions of the Administrative Procedure Act?”
“Yes. Despite these exemptions, SBA will follow the public participation requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 553, in rulemakings relating to public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts.”
That section is now removed and reserved. The answer to the question is no longer yes.
The reason given
The explanation takes one sentence: “The SBA has a new policy of acting more nimbly in response to changing circumstances and this rescission will allow for that.” The rule says the agency may still ask for comments “on a case by case basis” when it decides the benefits are worth it.
And because the rule is, in the SBA’s description, a general statement of policy that only affects how outsiders present their views, the rule ending public comment was itself issued without public comment. It also skipped the usual 30 day wait before taking effect, on the grounds that it “relieves a restriction.” The restriction it relieves is the one on the SBA.
Your input is worth $4,311 a year
This is the part of the rule that deserves to be framed and hung in a lobby. The SBA put a dollar value on public comment.
It counted 33 proposed rules between 2021 and 2025. It assumed answering the comments on each one takes 40 hours of a GS 13, Step 5 employee, whose Washington salary it lists as $138,024 in 2026. With a 1.6 multiplier for benefits and overhead, that is $4,247 per rule, or $28,029 a year the agency no longer has to spend listening.
Then it did the public. It assumed “the public spends an average of 20 hours writing comments on each rule” at $32.66 an hour, and concluded the public “will be expected to save $4,311 per year.”
Run that math yourself. Thirty three rules over five years is 6.6 rules a year. Twenty hours times $32.66 is $653.20 a rule. Multiply and you land on $4,311. So the model does not assume every commenter spends 20 hours. It assumes the entire American public spends 20 hours, combined, on each SBA rule. One person. One afternoon and change. That is the whole value the agency assigned to everyone who might have had something to say about the loans they live on.
The grand total of the benefit, in the rule’s own words: “the quantified annual cost savings of this rule is $32,340.”
The downside got two sentences. The rule concedes there “may be potential disbenefits” if public comments would have improved the regulations, then says those are “expected to be minor.”
The quiet sentence at the bottom
If you only read one paragraph of this rule, skip the cost table and go to the section on the Regulatory Flexibility Act. That is the law that makes agencies stop and study how a new rule will land on small businesses. For the Small Business Administration, you would think it matters more than anywhere.
The rule notes that the RFA “requires such analysis only where notice and comment rulemaking is required.” The SBA used that to skip the analysis for this rule. Follow the logic forward. The exemptions the SBA just stopped waiving cover loans, grants, benefits and contracts. A future rule in those areas that goes out without notice and comment may never trigger a small business impact analysis at all. The agency built to speak for small business has removed the step where small business gets asked.
What is still open
Comment has not vanished everywhere. The SBA’s two August 20, 2026 proposed rules on small business size standards are still taking comments through September 21, 2026. If you have an opinion about who counts as small, that window is real and it closes in six days.
Use it. After August 31, you are only getting asked when the SBA decides you are worth more than $653.20.
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