Golf course guru Bill Walters once said he’s been lucky when it comes to his dealing with local governments. And that’s true, if you define “luck” as outrageous political influence, juiced by generous political contributions.

And those relationships and that money pays off. Take the Case of the Phantom Golf Course, for example. Back in 2001, the county struck a lease agreement with Walters for 320 acres of land at Durango Drive and Warm Springs Road. He was supposed to build a pair of golf courses for the public.

But no golf courses ever appeared. Instead, Walters came to the county one year later to get 40 of those acres rezoned for him to build commercial and offices. Now, you don’t have to have a master’s in urban planning to realize that a “golf course” and a “for-profit commercial office complex” are not the same thing. And you don’t need to have gone to Harvard Business School to know Walters was going to make more money building a fancy commercial project than fairways.

But “luck” was with Walters that day in 2002, and the county agreed with his request.

And still, no golf courses appeared on the remaining 280 acres. Flash forward to today, when the commission is passing a ban on new golf courses, since they suck too much water and we are, after all, in a drought.

So, the commission asked Walters to give the 280 acres back, so the county could build a park that doesn’t use a lot of water. Cactus, Rock and Joshua Tree park, we can call it. And wouldn’t you know it? Walters agreed! What a prince of a guy!

It was left to Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates to put things in perspective. “I knew all along a golf course was not going to be built there; that is not news to me,” she said, according to the Review-Journal. He was glad to give that land back. He was never going to develop it. He walked away with a huge commercial piece that he initially said was going to be a golf course. Taxpayers end up with the short end of the stick.”

And, what she didn’t say, was that short end of the stick was shoved right up our collective … wallets. (What did you think we were going to say?)

Why not insist at the time Walters came back and asked for re-zoning that he pay full price for the land he wanted to develop? Good question. But, once more, Walters was lucky to avoid it.

So the city of Las Vegas has filed charges against Veronica Schmidt, the woman allegedly hopped up on Xanax who killed four people at a bus stop. The decision comes after the Clark County District Attorney’s office and the Attorney General’s office declined to prosecute Schmidt, saying the case couldn’t be won.

But the city, which refused to take no for an answer (and has jurisdiction, since the crime took place within city limits) held firm. An investigation showed Schmidt was impaired by the Xanax, which was present in her bloodstream at twice the prescribed amount.

The irony? Since the city can only prosecute misdemeanor crimes, Schmidt only faces two years in jail for reckless driving, driving under the influence and giving false information to a police officer.

The other irony? The Review-Journal also reported today that Jessica Williams, the woman who fell asleep at the wheel in 2000 and ran off the road, killing six teenagers, was denied in her bid for freedom. (A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied her lawyer’s bid to throw out her conviction.) Williams was most specifically not under the influence of marijuana, a jury found, but she did have the drug in her blood at the time of the accident. Her sentence: 18 to 48 years.

So a woman who was allegedly under the influence almost escapes without any charges, but, even if convicted, faces two years in county jail max. A woman who was not under the influence gets 18-48 years in state prison. It’s ridiculous.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Williams should have been charged with involuntary vehicular manslaughter, and spent probably six years in prison. And we’ll say it for the first time here: Good for the Las Vegas city attorney’s office for moving forward when everybody else said it couldn’t be done. Even if the city loses the Schmidt case, it still sends the message that drugged driving will be punished just like drunk driving. And so it should.

What shouldn’t be punished is non-drugged driving, like Williams. But that’s another screaming outrage for another day.