...Led by Assemblyman Jim Beall, a group of seven South Bay legislators will ask the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to conduct the audit, saying it is needed to resolve a heated debate over Mayor Chuck Reed's projections of the city's pension woes. The audit request comes on the eve of a City Council meeting Tuesday to consider whether to modify a June pension reform ballot measure that Reed is pushing to ease the growing costs of employee retirement. Employee unions have criticized the mayor for his estimate of $650 million in future pension costs, saying he inflated the figure by hundreds of millions of dollars to solidify his political arguments.

Oakland City Councilwoman Desley Brooks approved payment of more than $18,000 in city redevelopment funds to buy music studio equipment for a teen center staffed by her aides that top city officials have been scrutinizing, records show. Brooks, who opened the Digital Arts and Culinary Academy last year, is authorized to sign payment approvals only for items involving her office budget, city officials said.

[T]he mayor was before a bank of cameras acknowledging that 13 acres of concrete and pilings known as Piers 30-32, which the city has tried unsuccessfully to develop for decades, would no longer be rehabilitated to serve as sailing team bases for the 2013 races. While the regatta will go on, the shift probably cut hundreds of jobs from the city's projections for hosting international sailing's premier event.

New Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson isn’t wasting any time with restructuring the company — it’s reportedly on the verge of laying off thousands of employees, AllThingsD is reporting.

A's owner Lew Wolff dismissed a report that the A's likely will be denied permission to pursue a move to San Jose. The New York Daily News' Bill Madden wrote Saturday that Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is likely to uphold the Giants' territorial rights to San Jose, ending the A's drive to build a new ballpark in that city.

...Top private schools, with their generous aid, have been among the most affordable options for poor students for a few years, but rising tuition has only recently sent California State University and University of California prices shooting past the Harvards and Yales for middle-class students.

Less than six weeks from now, a little-known nine-member panel will make a decision that will influence San Francisco politics for the next decade. The city's Redistricting Task Force has until April 15 to redraw the boundaries for San Francisco's 11 supervisors' districts, an undertaking driven by the population shift since 2000.

Former Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein has been called as a witness in San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi's upcoming domestic violence trial, after phone records revealed the longtime newspaperman was in contact with the prosecution's star witness before she went to police.