There's a fairly active Mega-thread about camping and resting here if you wanted to suggest your idea there https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=752528

While some people have suggested making short rests mandatory, I don't think anyone in that thread has thought of your "1st-level spells restore after short rest" idea. I don't particularly like it, as it seems like a band-aid fix that also significantly changes how spellcasters work. These types of fixes are the sources of a lot of the issues with BG3. But I also don't hate it; it's a compromise between unlimited resting and 5e restrictions on resting.

The former aspect would require untying camp cutscenes from long rests, but that should be done anyway. I'm not sure how frustrating it'd be to need to short rest twice before long resting though...