We're a medical device company with Breakthrough Device status, and it works largely like this. Whenever we submit, FDA has 30 days to reach a decision from time of receipt, and if they don't decide, we automatically get approval. Really helps with keeping up momentum!
I think it makes a lot more sense then suing the city or issuing fines--at least in theory.
Government is spiteful and vengeful, and wronging them will result in vicious consequence.
I'm not very familiar with the specifics, but AFAIU the most important municipalities in the state enjoy so-called "Home Rule" under the California Constitution. I believe that means that a self-executing rule such as you've proposed is unconstitutional. Rather, somewhat like the constraints imposed on the Federal government viz-a-viz the states, the state government is often limited to cajoling municipalities through expenditures, budgeting, and law suits.
There are usually arcane rules. Sometimes things have to get put on by council sometimes cities allow citizen petitions.
Something that changes the charter/constitution versus just an ordinance or a tax/levy.
And sadly activist judges can have too large of a say imho.
If the latter strategy works out, you don't need to spend the money. So it can be re-used for other threats.
These shenanigans cost us rougly $500-1000 a day in insurance, interest, etc. They drug it out for about a year.
The department that decided they liked us has bankrupted multiple people on our street. We'd have at least 5-10% more houses on our street (there is plenty of room) if not for them.
California's state government has an alert on their website specifically listing various things that department did to us and pointing out they were illegal. Instead of suing, we kissed all the right asses in the right order, so now we have a house. Again, this is best case for interacting with them because they liked us, apparently.
Based on conversations with neighbors, my level of satisfaction with this planning office is roughly median for the area, but our experience was way better than average.
Marvin Heemeyer of Killdozer fame is a personal hero of mine now (Don't worrtly, I don't know how to weld. However, I do know how to make campaign donations and vote!):
https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer
Missing from that article are apparently true allegations of direct financial conflicts of interest within the zoning commission, and him being forced to sell land so that one of their cronies could develop it instead. Also note that he fought them for over a decade.
One of our state representatives is running for reelection on a plan to spend huge amounts of state/federal infrastructure money to bypass the office that likes to bankrupt people. 100's of familes will be forced off their land before the plan kicks in (assuming it passes).
So, anyway, there needs to be harsh financial consequences for just rejecting permits for the heck of it.
Ideally, promotions would be tied to correctly processing permit applications. That's probably illegal around here or something.
Capitalism is about amassing resources ahead of time and then trying to buy time, create a stalemate and wait it out until the other party has run out of resources and must give up.
Fighting a war accellerates the rate of capital exhaustion and destroys existing capital. Because everyone starts from a blank slate people do not have enough capital to waste on outwaiting their opponent and they instead focus on cooperation resulting in a few wonderful economic decades until everything goes bad again as people use their amassed capital to fight each other.
To close the resulting loophole where they just reject all permits when they have a backlog, there would be automatic penalties for improperly rejected permits, with a floor of an after-tax value of 2 times the financial damage done to applicant; permit office pays legal fees.