Securities and Exchange Commission rule-making saw its first uptick last year since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The number of regulations in the pipeline had steadily declined since hitting a peak of 107 in 2011, the first full year of the financial reform law’s effect.

But after reaching a recent low of 61 in 2014, the rules under active consideration climbed to 69 in 2015, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

The number of rules finalized by the securities regulator followed the same pattern.

Four regulations were put on the books in 2015 after two were the previous year.

This followed a post-Dodd-Frank surge of a total of 81 rules completed from 2011 through 2013.

While the financial reform law spiked SEC regulations as a whole, the height of rules impacting small businesses came at the turn of the millennium when commissioners were trying to (unsuccessfully) rein in speculation during the Internet’s infancy.

It was during the dot-com craze that companies were going public with sky-high hopes that soared above revenues.

To bring investors and stock promoters down to earth became a large part of the SEC’s job during that time. To that end, the agency increased the amount of information companies had to make public (through Regulation FD, as in “fair disclosure”) and it adopted the auditor independence rule to increase the integrity of financial statements at the time, according to Lynn Turner, who was the SEC’s chief accountant in 2000 and 1999.

In those years, SEC rules affecting small business reached highs not seen since then; there were 40 rules in 1999 and 39 in the year 2000.

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