Californiastan has its fruity government, but it's not alone.It's funny in a funny way that leftist California has, at least in part, less government nuttiness than other parts of the country.
When you wrote
it triggered my comment about lack of inspections. I have a couple of friends who are architects and from what I've seen, their knowledge of the nit picky but critical details is somewhere around zero, even "Architects of Record". So I see no way that someone in that position would know the details needed to judge how well the work was done (outside of the usual exceptions, of course).
Thus an "inspection" by one such person would be to me no better than no inspection. Capiche, Comrade?
It even gives out building permits too easily in disaster prone areas.