Tension is brewing between City Council members who oppose Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project at Brooklyn and Council Speaker Gifford Miller, who they said has ignored repeated requests to schedule a hearing on the contentious project.

Holding a hearing on the Atlantic Yards project, which includes an 18,000-seat arena for the Nets basketball team, is one of the few options open to the council. Because the state is overseeing the development, it is not subject to the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Process.

The council’s economic development committee was to hold a hearing on the Atlantic Yards project last Wednesday, but the speaker’s office never scheduled it, the chairman of the committee, Council Member James Sanders, a Democrat of Queens, said.

“Give me a date for the hearing – that is all I want – but the speaker has continued to put it off,” Council Member Letitia James said. A Democrat, she represents the downtown Brooklyn area, where the development will be.

In addition to the basketball arena, the project, bordered by Dean Street and Atlantic, Flatbush, and Vanderbilt avenues, calls for 2 million square feet of office space, 4.5 million square feet of residential development, retail shops, and parking lots, according to the memorandum of understanding signed by Mr. Ratner’s company, Forest City Ratner, and officials of the city and the state.

Mr. Miller, who is running for the Democratic nomination for mayor, has not taken a public position on the project. A Miller spokeswoman, Leticia Theodore, denied that the speaker is delaying a hearing, saying it would be held “sometime this month.”

Ms. James contrasted the speaker’s diffidence on the Brooklyn project with his outspoken opposition to Mayor Bloomberg’s planned New York Sports and Convention Center at Manhattan, which will provide a new home for the New York Jets football team.

“It is inconsistent because the speaker is not supporting the stadium on the West Side, but this is so much worse than that project,” Ms. James said. “At least in the Hudson Yards, they had a chance to rezone the area, but I can’t even do that because the state has taken over the 24 acres.”

Some of the land on which the development is to be built is owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which comes under the state’s jurisdiction. According to the memorandum of understanding, the Empire State Development Corporation, a state entity, will create a local development corporation that will supervise the project.

A report published earlier this month by a group that opposes the Atlantic Yards development, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, concluded that public subsidies for the project exceed $1.5 billion. That sum includes a 30-year property-tax exemption, a mortgage-recording-tax exemption, and tax-exempt bonds. Also, Forest City Ratner will pay only $1 for a 99-year lease on the 6.5 acres of land under the proposed Nets arena.

Beyond that, the development is to receive $100 million from both the city and the state. The city has already set aside the money in the budget, Ms. James said.

“I would like to get the money taken out of the budget, or at least put some conditions on it,” she said.

The conflict in the City Council belies a greater conflict in the community, which is sharply divided on the Atlantic Yards project.

The Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance, which supports the Ratner project, was founded by the Reverend Herbert Daughtry after he broke from his longtime organization of black ministers, which opposed the development.

Brooklyn United for Innovative Development, or BUILD, also supports the Atlantic Yards development – and has been the target of rumors that Mr. Ratner is its financial backer. The first vice president at BUILD, Marie Louis, called the claim “a malicious and outrageous lie.”

The pro-Atlantic Yards groups, which also include the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, have been negotiating a community-benefits agreement with Forest City Ratner for more than a year. According to Ms. Louis, the deal is in its final stages and should be released in the coming weeks. It promises affordable housing, jobs for minorities and women, and job training.