Counties

The discovery of drugs inside the car of a pair of hikers rescued in a multiday search has prompted Orange County officials to consider charging them for the $160,000 operation and fanned a debate on when people should pay for their misadventures. One of the hikers, Nicolas Cendoya, was charged Tuesday with a felony count of methamphetamine possession after authorities said they found a small amount of the drug in the car the pair parked before setting off on an Easter Sunday hike.

Paul Tanaka was once a trusted aide to Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and, in the view of many department critics, the real power behind the badge. But earlier this year, Tanaka was forced out of his job, and now, in a jaw-dropping interview with The Times' Robert Faturechi, he has accused Baca of a variety of misdeeds, including nepotism, fostering a culture of abuse and putting politics (and foreign travel) ahead of public safety. Whether those charges are accurate or merely the angry allegations of your typical disgruntled former employee is not yet clear.

The Southern California wildfire season got off to an ominous start Thursday with a massive brush fire in Ventura County that officials fear is just a preview of dangerous months ahead. The fire showed in dramatic fashion how the region's record dry conditions and lack of rainfall can quickly combine with fierce Santa Ana winds to produce widespread havoc. Firefighters said the dry winter and spring left the brush much more combustible than they've ever seen it at this time of year.

Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to temporarily lower filming fees at their newly opened Grand Park downtown. Movie and TV crews previously had to pay $20,000 a day per block of park space they used. Many entertainment executives said that was too high, especially compared with similar backdrops. The cost of permits was the main reason why only one film has been shot at the park since it opened last year, executives said. Under the new fee structure, crews will pay as much as $5,000 a day, depending on time of day and what part of the 12-acre park they use. Supervisors voted 4 to 1 to approve the new costs, with Don Knabe casting the only no vote.

Epidemiologists are investigating an outbreak of valley fever that has sickened 28 workers at two large solar power construction sites in San Luis Obispo County. Staff from the California Department of Public Health, and investigators from the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health and San Luis Obispo County visited the sites near the Carrizo Plain two months ago, officials said. They identified the sites as the Topaz Solar Farm and California Valley Solar Ranch, two large-scale photovoltaic power plants whose construction often requires considerable scraping and clearing to make way for thousands of acres of solar panels.

Los Angeles County supervisors met behind closed doors Tuesday to consider terminating their decades-long relationship with Teens Happy Homes, a private foster care provider found by officials to have repeatedly misused funds and placed children in homes where they were abused. "The contractor should lose any contract it has," Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said in an interview Tuesday. "They are an irresponsible, unsafe provider. We'll discuss it in executive session. " No action was announced publicly after the session, but one source familiar with the discussion said Department of Children and Family Services Director Philip Browning was instructed to prepare options to correct the problems.

Los Angeles County supervisors rejected a bid Tuesday from several Santa Clarita Valley school districts and a water district hoping to consolidate elections in a bid to avoid the kind of voting rights lawsuits that other local governments have been hit with. The measure failed on a 2-2 vote, with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas abstaining. County election officials opposed the change, arguing that shifting the districts to November even-year elections would exceed their ability to conduct elections.

One pilot died after two small planes collided Monday afternoon over Ventura County, sending one plummeting into a mountainside and forcing the other to land on a golf course. Both planes were Cessna single-engine aircraft. At least one had departed from Santa Monica Airport before crashing about 2 p.m. in the Santa Monica Mountains, according to preliminary information from the Federal Aviation Administration. The other, which had three people on board, belly landed at the Westlake Golf Course.

Two families, both loving and stable, are vying to adopt a 4-year-old girl with strawberry blond hair and large blue eyes. One is certain to be broken-hearted. The tug of war began in May 2011, when Los Angeles County child protection authorities took the girl away from her drug-addicted mother and placed her in a foster home. Five weeks later, her paternal grandparents found out and moved to get her back. But the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services sat on the couple's paperwork for nearly a year, according to a claim they have filed against the county.

A decade ago, a team of Los Angeles County auditors delivered a damning assessment of Teens Happy Homes, a private foster care agency responsible for hundreds of children. Agency workers bought beer and cigarettes with public funds intended for mistreated children, auditors found. It billed the state and county more than $100,000 for care it never provided. Employees wrote checks to themselves worth thousands of dollars and kept no receipts. The auditors' conclusion: The county needed to give Teens closer supervision or cancel its contract.