I’m currently building something in a much more lax area, but even here, the few parts that require permits/inspection are by far the largest hurdles, because they impose a rigid sequential order of operations that have to happen before I can move on, and require a licensed master tradesman to pull the permit, whereas most other things can generally proceed as materials/equipment/people become available.
On your point about local government getting greedy, I went to the state of the county address in our area recently, and the county executive gave a long laundry list of how many millions he was splashing out to x and y, to fanfare for each spending figure, as if the goal was to spend more, rather than get the maximal impact for the dollars. I guess most of the audience were people from those departments receiving the additional money, but as a non-government worker, it was a bit sickening.