Investigators have accused the city of Las Vegas of prolonging the inquiry into the city's dealings with the Royal Links Golf Club and developer Bill Walters by taking 10 weeks to produce documents related to the controversial land deal.

On Wednesday, Las Vegas City Council members revealed the accusation, made in a letter sent by the law firm conducting the probe on behalf of the attorney general's office. Council members then lashed out against the investigation and defended the city's level of cooperation.

On Monday, the city turned over to investigators 18,000 pages of documents that staff had spent about 170 hours assembling, Mayor Oscar Goodman said.

The council will consider at its March 1 meeting releasing to investigators about six additional documents protected by attorney-client and manager-client privilege. Goodman said he will advocate that officials waive the privileges and release the documents.

"From the inception I have said we would give full disclosure," the mayor said. "We have nothing to hide."

Goodman said he believed the investigators at Senn Meulemans LLC, the law firm conducting the investigation on behalf of the attorney general's office, "owes us an apology" after receiving all of the documents.

The attorney general first requested documents from the city in late November, according to Reno attorney Cal Dunlap, a former Washoe County district attorney who was hired by Senn Meulemans to assist in the investigation.

"The delay has naturally delayed our work," Dunlap said. "And we understand other people have other things to do, but Mayor Goodman was the one to urge us to conclude the investigation as quickly as possible."

The city's dealings with Walters came under scrutiny last year when the developer sought to turn Royal Links into a 1,200-home subdivision.

Amid controversy over studies of the proposal, the city asked for a police investigation. Police found no criminal wrongdoing related to the current effort to build houses on the golf course land. But authorities concluded that former Public Works Director Richard Goecke probably had committed criminal acts in the late 1990s benefiting Walters and possibly costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

After the Clark County district attorney's office reviewed the police inquiry and determined that criminal charges could not be pursued because the statute of limitations had expired, the attorney general began investigating the matter.

Attorney General George Chanos took himself off the case after he disclosed that he had business pending before the City Council.

Goodman has said that once the investigation is over, he wants to bring back the original proposal allowing Walters to turn Royal Links Golf Club into a housing development.

City officials would not release to the Review-Journal on Wednesday any of the letters from Senn Meulemans or the documents the city provided to the law firm. Because of the investigation the city attorney's office was still reviewing a request for the documents, a city spokeswoman said.

Goodman and Councilmen Larry Brown and Steve Wolfson criticized the allegations made in the firm's letter, arguing that the city had moved quickly to provide information to investigators. "We're being accused of dragging our feet," Goodman said.

Brown leveled some of the sharpest criticism. "I don't know the intricacies of the investigation. I do know that this firm has been borderline abusive as far as a lack of respect for the official communication process," Brown said.

He said lawyers from the firm have shown up to interview city staff without notice or placing a call to City Manager Doug Selby.

Goodman said he invited Chanos and Catherine Meulemans, a partner at the law firm, to attend Wednesday's council meeting. Both declined.

On Jan. 11, a partner with the firm sent a letter to council members "requesting confirmation that her office would have full and complete access to all city employees and documents," Dunlap said. "She received no response."

Wolfson said he never received a Jan. 11 letter from the firm. Dunlap said the letter was addressed to the mayor and council.

"I'm very concerned and frankly bothered by the flow of information or lack thereof that has occurred in the past months," Wolfson said. "I don't enjoy the assertion that this council as a body, or individual members, are not being cooperative and causing delay."

After a Feb. 10 meeting between investigators and representatives of the city attorney's office, Goodman asked that the request for documents be made in writing.

Following the meeting, the firm sent a letter requesting the documents. "It was sent in the spirit of good will and cooperation," Dunlap said. "It was intended to solve problems, move the investigation along."

Dunlap said that in meetings and letters, investigators also have asked city officials for a list of documents that might be protected by attorney-client privilege. It has yet to receive that list, he said.

Dunlap would not disclose any information about the range of the investigation or any targets.

"I don't believe it would be appropriate to do that at this juncture. It wouldn't be fair to all concerned," he said.

He also wouldn't give a time line for completion of the investigation, saying that it would depend, in large part, on the information in the documents that the firm had just received.