SAN DIEGO -- NOTE: This story contains language that some may find offensive.

A Las Vegas strip club owner complained "often and very harshly" about Councilman Michael Zucchet's failure to get San Diego's "no- touch" dancing ordinance repealed, Zucchet's attorney told a jury Wednesday.

COUNCIL CORRUPTION Images:Timeline Read: Archive Video: Listen To FBI Wire Tap Discuss: San Diego Politics

Defense attorney Jerry Coughlan, in his opening statement in the council corruption case, said Zucchet told a lobbyist for Cheetah's owner Michael Galardi that he favored changing the city's "no-touch" nude dancing ordinance only if police favored the change.

Coughlan said Galardi lobbyist Lance Malone tried to get Zucchet to put the "no-touch" issue on the docket of the council's Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee.

"I need to hear what (the police) are willing to do, and what they're not willing to do," Zucchet told Malone, according to the attorney, who said he was quoting from a taped conversation.

Galardi also complained to others about Zucchet's slow movement on the issue, Coughlan said.

"He hasn't done a f------ thing, man," the attorney quoted Galardi as saying.

The strip club owner also complained to an undercover government informant, Coughlan said.

He quoted Galardi as saying, "Mr. Zucchet already f----- it up. He's an idiot, man. He ain't done s---."

Zucchet and fellow San Diego Councilman Ralph Inzunza are charged with taking thousands of dollars in bribes from Galardi between 2001 and early 2003.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Cook said in his opening statement Tuesday that the councilmen, including the late Charles Lewis -- who died of liver disease last August at the age of 37 after being indicted -- worked "to cheat the people of this city out of honest services of their elected officials."

Cook told jurors they would hear the councilmen "actively plan this criminal scheme" in more than 100,000 secretly recorded conversations, both from body wires and tapped telephone calls.

The defendants were indicted Aug. 28, 2003, three months after FBI agents raided offices at San Diego City Hall and three strip clubs owned by Galardi.

Dominic Gentile, Malone's attorney, said in his opening statement that Galardi, D'Intino and the undercover informant did not tell Malone that the informant was paying a San Diego vice officer, who was acting as a "corrupt cop," for information tipping off Cheetah's employees of upcoming raids.

"That information was hidden from him," Gentile said of Malone.

Malone was also given "counterfeit information" by the government informant, that police supported a change in the "no-touch" ordinance when in fact they did not, Gentile said.

"The evidence will show that there was no agreement to break the law on the part of Lance Malone," his attorney said.

In February 2003, Malone told the councilmen that he wouldn't do anything illegal and wouldn't go to jail for anybody, Gentile said.

"Let them know that we'll do everything by the book," Malone told the government informant in a recorded conversation quoted by his lawyer.

D'Intino and Galardi pleaded guilty in September 2003 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and the club owner is expected to be a key witness for the prosecution.

Zucchet, Inzunza and Malone each face three to four years in prison if convicted.