Las Vegas City Councilman Larry Brown asked the question, so I'm happy to answer.

"I'm not sure what an attorney general's inquiry means," Brown said at Wednesday's City Council meeting, before the entire council voted to rescind its Nov. 2 sweetheart giveaway to developer Billy Walters.

Councilman Brown, it means that Nevada's new attorney general, George Chanos, doesn't trust the city to police itself.

And it means that Chanos is politically astute.

Chanos, a Republican recently appointed to the job, has to run for election in 2006 to keep it. He sat in the back row of the City Council chambers, and most people there hadn't a clue who he was. But now he'll be known as the attorney general who investigated whether anything hinky happened in the city's dealings with Walters.

The probe will cover events since 1996, when the city first considered creating a buffer zone around a sewage treatment plant by restricting the land to use as a golf course, and events up through Walters' lease of the land in 1997, his purchase of it in 1999 for the deeply discounted price of $854,000, and that Nov. 2 decision by six council members to lift the deed restriction and let Walters build houses on the land. He agreed to pay the city an additional $7.2 million for land valued at as much as $55 million.

The next day a police report emerged indicating probable criminal conduct by now-retired Public Works Director Richard Goecke during the negotiations of both the lease and the 1999 sale.

That revelation prompted Councilman Steve Wolfson to call for reconsideration of the Nov. 2 vote. Mayor Oscar Goodman summoned 10 people to Wednesday's council meeting to be questioned about the controversy over the city's dealings with Walters and his Royal Links Golf Course.

When the city received Chanos' letter at 8:55 a.m., Goodman decided it would be prudent to halt everything.

Frankly, with all the questions about who knew what and when, Goodman and the other council members shouldn't be the ones asking the questions. They might need to answer some.

Wolfson and Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian, who weren't on the council in 1999, took shots at the city staff over the day-late-and-dollar-short report that they received only after the Nov. 2 vote.

Tarkanian, who had voted against lifting the deed restriction, said she hasn't been getting objective information on this and other issues and already has talked with City Manager Doug Selby about the recurring problem. She complained that she'd asked for objective information and received "subjective and slanted" information.

Wolfson provided another example of staff keeping council members in the dark. He said that when the issue first came up over the summer, Deputy City Attorney John Redlein "informed me of certain things regarding Dick Goecke that frankly were alarming to me."

Wolfson said he raised the issue with Goodman, and the agenda item was tabled. Before the Nov. 2 vote, Wolfson said, he was told by city staff that there was "no criminal wrongdoing" discovered, so he voted to lift the deed restriction.

The upside of Chanos jumping in is, if no wrongdoing is found, his independent review makes it more believable. With the odor of mendacity hovering over City Hall, a city investigation's conclusion of no wrongdoing would be dismissed by cynics as just another government whitewash.

Chief Deputy Attorney General Gerald Gardner said the case will be assigned to three investigators and three attorneys. He promised an exhaustive, objective probe.

Chanos said afterward that he decided to look into the leasing, development and sale of the 160 acres because "it's an important integrity issue."

For Chanos' political ambitions, the timing couldn't be better.

Catherine Cortez Masto, his probable Democratic challenger, is expected to be well funded and already is campaigning full time.

Chanos is now in the position of being an official aggressively looking after the taxpayers' interest. If he finds wrongdoing, it's likely charges would be filed before next year's election. If he says there is no wrongdoing, he's still the guy who stepped up to the plate. And got the headlines in doing so.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.