Auditions

SACRAMENTO -- State finance officials caught accounting discrepancies at the California parks department as far back as 1999, but the issue was not resolved until it mushroomed into an embarrassing scandal last year, according to a new audit released Thursday.  The audit  also described other loose practices at state parks: Parks and Recreation Department officials haven't tracked costs and spending for individual parks, and base operating estimates...

SACRAMENTO - More than a decade before California's parks department became enveloped in financial scandal, state officials discovered accounting problems there, according to an audit released Thursday. Still, the department was able to continue hiding millions of dollars for years. Moreover, officials don't have a clear picture of how much each park costs - they track expenses by districts with multiple properties - and rely on outdated budget metrics, the review found. Assemblywoman Beth Gaines (R-Rocklin)

Local officials Tuesday called for investigations into the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department funneling hundreds of bulletproof vests to Cambodia through the city of Gardena. Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas requested an audit to determine whether officials violated the law in shipping the vests a decade ago to the Southeast Asian country. A Gardena official also said she would be asking for an investigation into her city being used as an intermediary for the unusual transaction.

At virtually every campaign stop, Los Angeles mayoral candidate and City Controller Wendy Greuel points to eliminating $160 million in "waste, fraud and abuse" she's found at City Hall as a solution to the city's fiscal troubles and evidence that she would be a tough fiscal manager as mayor. But most of the dollar total in Greuel's claim, now featured in television ads, relies on two audits that depend on an accounting maneuver and a large revenue projection that the controller's office itself said was unrealistic from the start.

The blind taste auditions finally came to an end on Tuesday night's episode of "The Taste. " Typically, the auditions are the best part of any competition. Those shows highlight the wackiest, worst, no-business-being-on-TV people for your entertainment pleasure. But I got a little bored with "The Taste. " Watching judges Ludo Lefebvre, Nigella Lawson, Brian Malarkey and Anthony Bourdain wear the same clothing they did in the first episode, but pretend it was a different day, and send chef after chef home with no real reason left me wanting more, and frustrated with the show's premise.

It took Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies a minute longer to respond to emergency calls from unincorporated parts of the county than from cities that contract with the department for police services, according to a county audit. The finding comes days after Supervisor Gloria Molina accused Sheriff Lee Baca of "stealing" police resources from residents in unincorporated neighborhoods and threatened to hire "independent private patrol cars" to backfill cuts in sheriff's patrols.

Capping a raucous eight-hour-plus meeting, the Irvine City Council early Wednesday voted to overhaul the oversight and spending on the beleaguered Orange County Great Park while authorizing an audit of the more than $220 million that so far has been spent on the ambitious project. A newly elected City Council majority voted 3 to 2 to terminate contracts with two firms that had been paid a combined $1.1 million a year for consulting, lobbying, marketing and public relations. One of those firms - Forde & Mollrich public relations - has been paid $12.4 million since county voters approved the Great Park plan in 2002.

An audit of the L.A. County assessor's office delivers mostly common-sense recommendations to address the bribery controversy. The recommendations of a new audit of the Los Angeles County assessor's office are a responsible, if somewhat depressing, reaction to the controversy that has embroiled that department for months. Its top official, John Noguez, has been arrested and charged with accepting bribes from a tax consultant who was seeking reduced assessments for his client's properties, a charge that, as the audit notes, creates the impression that "the property tax system in Los Angeles County is being gamed by politically connected taxpayers.

An audit of the embattled Los Angeles County assessor's office released late Thursday recommends key changes, including the appointment of a chief deputy with "managerial competence" and the requirement that private tax consultants register with the county. Conducted by Strategica Inc., the audit comes as elected Assessor John Noguez fights accusations that he pocketed $185,000 in bribes from a prominent tax consultant and campaign contributor who requested lower tax appraisals on client properties.

For aspiring actors growing up in Great Britain, "Les Miserables" wasn't just a popular stage musical, it was practically required viewing - particularly for Samantha Barks and Eddie Redmayne. Barks spent much of her youth performing a one-girl version of the show on her karaoke machine while Redmayne became obsessed with the play after first seeing it when he was 7. Barks soon left karaoke behind and went on to join the cast of a West End production of "Les Miz" in 2010. And now, at 22 - having beaten out the likes of Taylor Swift and Scarlett Johansson - the actress makes her film debut in the role of the lovelorn street waif Eponine in the adaptation of the classic Victor Hugo novel from director Tom Hooper ("The Kings Speech")