I'll throw out I also know a guy who is a developer, they have had enough bad issues working in Oregon alone that they have 0 intention of ever touching anything in CA with a 10ft pole, simply because it isn't worth it to deal with the hassle and the headaches.
A sinister part of the hassle and headaches are that sometimes they are designed to be so convoluted such that only certain favorite developers are even qualified to take up the project at all. Keeping your friend out of the market is sometimes the point.
> A sinister part of the hassle and headaches are that sometimes they are designed to be so convoluted such that only certain favorite developers are even qualified to take up the project at all.
Famously, the French corporation that builds high-speed railways abandoned the Californian project and moved to Morocco, claiming that Moroccan bureaucracy is much easier to work with.
