> if stuff gets falsified on the affidavit we go after you after-the-fact
You'd better be prepared to demolish a lot of buildings if you're going to play it that way. A developer can have the buildings up, sold, the money moved offshore and the shell company responsible for the building wound up before the court case about lying on the affidavit completes.
Also, you'd better have a plan to deal with the angry voters.
Precisely this. Especially in a market with a humongous appetite for development like the Bay Area, if you unleash the flood gates, you're going to get a lot of charlatans who cut dangerous corners, and they will mysteriously disappear before they will be held to account. In the meantime, their victims will pay the price, either in blood or in the financial losses incurred from losing property that must be destroyed because it's unsafe.
Regulation isn't so much the problem as regulation which is slow to the point where it effectively kills development. There is a balance.
Obvious-to-me solution: developers can't sell the building until the information in the affidavit gets verified. Basically, the entire scope of my proposal is to turn the "am I allowed to build here?" question into something that can be determined without the uncertainty of "how much effort will the local community put into fucking with the project".
You'd better be prepared to demolish a lot of buildings if you're going to play it that way. A developer can have the buildings up, sold, the money moved offshore and the shell company responsible for the building wound up before the court case about lying on the affidavit completes.
Also, you'd better have a plan to deal with the angry voters.