All eyes on Sunday were transfixed by the Las Vegas Sun insert in the Review-Journal, and the rather lengthy attention given to golf course mogul Bill Walters’ dealings out at the Royal Links golf course.

Where to begin?

With the good news, of course! The Sun made full disclosure: Investigative reporter Steve Kanigher’s story contains a line revealing that the Greenspun family, owners of the Sun, are business partners with Walters in a Henderson real-estate deal. Sun Editor Brian Greenspun’s adjacent column has a similar admission. (By the way, Sun, that’s Greenspun, as in Hank, not Greenspan, as in Alan.)

But, we’re sad to say, the good news stops there as the Sun launches into a defense of the Walters deal with the city of Las Vegas that makes wild assumptions, relies on carefully constructed straw men and comes to wildly unbelievable conclusions.

First, let’s give you a few foundational facts:

• Foundational Fact No. 1: Bill Walters purchased the 160-acre Royal Links site in 1999 for the low, low price of $894,000, with the proviso that it be used only as a golf course. Why? The city’s sewer treatment plant isn’t far away, and the land was meant to separate homes from the plant. The city, by the way, had paid $5.6 million to assemble the land, so taxpayers took a net loss on the sale.)

• Foundational Fact No. 2: Last year, Walters approached the city and asked for the City Council to remove the deed restriction on the property, because he wanted to build homes there. He offered $7.2 million for the transaction, what he claimed was the value of the land without the deed restriction back in 1999, plus 6 percent interest per year.

• Foundational Fact No. 3: City-sought estimates have put the value of the land without the deed restriction at between $35.6 million and $55.7 million.

• Foundational Fact No. 4: Although Walters owns the land, he cannot develop a single home there without city permission. And the city is in a position of strength, to demand that Walters pay the going rate for the unencumbered land today, which is far in excess of $7.2 million. And that’s if they even want to allow Walters to build homes, which some city officials have suggested could result in increased costs of up to $70 million at the sewage treatment plant, for odor control. (It should be noted that Clark County has approved homes as close as 150 feet from the plant; Walters subdivision would come within 20 feet of the plant’s property line.)

• Snarky Conclusion No. 1: So, faced with a situation where the right thing seems to be to deny Walters request and keep the land as a buffer, or to at the very least ask Walters to pay what the unencumbered land is worth today … the council immediately tried to jam through Walters’ suggestion, until things were stopped cold by an attorney general’s investigation.

So, with that brief background, what did the Sun say? The newspaper commissioned a firm to study the deal, and concluded that (no shit) it would benefit taxpayers! (We have not read the study; we’re just privy to what was printed in the paper.)

So what were the firm’s, and the Sun’s, conclusions?

• By eliminating Walters favorable deal, wherein he can buy treated wastewater for just 26 cents per 1,000 gallons, while it’s going for almost $2 per 1,000 gallons at other golf courses. (Yes, that was actually printed — eliminate the downside of one sweetheart deal with an even bigger one.)

• By getting so-called “return flow credits” for recycling water that used to be used to irrigate the course. (Of course, those credits would not inure to the sole benefit of Las Vegas taxpayers, who will be losing out on this deal — see below.)

• By the $7.2 million that Walters is offering to lift the deed restriction. (A pretty good price, as we try to demonstrate below.)

And, wouldn’t you know it, the firm hired by the Sun estimates that, without a deed restriction, the land is worth $43 million. Without it, the land is worth $23.6 million as a golf course. The difference between those two numbers is $19.4 million. And since Walters is going to pay $7.2 million, he only stands to make a profit of $12.2 million.

We’ll give you a minute to get the Kleenex to wipe away the tears for poor Walters, making a mere $12.2 million on the deal. And we’ll give you another minute to figure out the big flaw with the math above.

Ready? OK, here we go.

Even the Sun’s experts admit the land is worth $49 million without that nasty deed restriction. So, starting at $49 million, let’s subtract Walters payments and see what we’ve got:

$49 million — Sun estimate of land value.

(MINUS) $7.2 million — Walters proposed payment to eliminate the deed restriction, thus resulting in land worth $49 million.

$41.8 million — remainder

(MINUS) $894,000 — Walters original 1999 purchase price.

$40.9 million — remainder, which should be read as Walters’ instant profit!

And, if we add back in the $5.6 million that taxpayers had to spend on the land in the first place, we’re back up to $46.5 million, which is what taxpayers would lose if this deal goes through. (And that’s assuming the Sun’s analysis is correct, and that the high appraisal of $55.7 million is wrong.)

Of course, there are other factors, but one of them should not be the improvements that Walters made to the Royal Links course. He and the city struck a deal in 1999, and both parties lived up to their sides of that deal. Now, Walters wants an entirely new deal, and that means that what’s happened in the past is history.

Of course, we could be wrong. Walters told the Sun that “You have people in the media who have been writing about this who frankly don’t know what they’re writing about.” It could be we’re missing something, or more correctly, not buying into a key Walters/Sun assumption about the deal.

“When you have people with personal agendas writing about things who don’t have the background to know what they’re talking about, i don’t know how you combat that. But I think this study is very refreshing,” Walters said. (Well of course he does; it’s the only analysis besides his own that suggests this is anything but a sweetheart deal.)

Ouch, baby. Comments like that might suggest that we at Various Things & Stuff have some kind of personal agenda with respect to Walters. We don’t. In fact, we’ve written good things about him (defending him when Metro Police seized more than $2 million from his sports betting operation, and failed to return the money even after cases against Walters collapsed). And we’ve written bad things (like critiquing this Royal Links deal).

For his part, Greenspun touts the study in his front-page column, slamming in the process the Review-Journal, which has had reporter David McGrath Schwartz digging up details on the case for months. “Contrary to the opinion of the Review-Journal, its minions and a few assorted complainers in this town, my friend Bill Walters is not getting a sweetheart deal from the city of Las Vegas. In fact — perhaps for the first time in his life — he is getting by far the worst deal in his desire to develop Royal Links Golf Course into homes.”

Really, Brian? The worst deal? By far? Your friend Bill Walters is about to spend a grand total of $8,094,000 for unencumbered use of land that your own newspaper says is worth $49,000,000, and that’s a bad deal? We’d hate to see Walters on a good day, at least if taxpayers are involved.

Then again, we’re just assorted complainers. (We assume we’re not “minions” of the R-J, since we regularly criticize that newspaper, too.)

The Sun’s independent study is, at best, seriously flawed. (For example, it didn’t take into account the potential costs of upgrading the sewer treatment plant. There may be more; we wrote Sun Managing Editor Mike Kelley a nice letter today, requesting a copy. We’ll let you know if he says yes.) At worst, however, the study — from what we read of it in the Sun, at least — is a conscious misleading of the newspaper’s readers to a preordained conclusion favored by the newspaper’s owners, self-admitted business partners with Walters. And that’s a huge conflict of interest, whether disclosed or not.

But it’s also more than that: It’s an abandonment of the newspaper’s role — and obligation — to tell the truth. This is not a simple Sun promotion of a Greenspun family business partner (say, Station Casinos). It’s propaganda, pure and simple. And Sunday marked one of the darkest days in the history of a once-proud newspaper.

Full disclosure: We at Various Things & Stuff worked at theLas Vegas Sun from 1993-1997. This blog, CityLife and us are all owned by the Stephens Media Group, owners of the Review-Journal, the Sun’s main competitor and partner in the joint-operating agreement that sees both newspapers delivered together.)

UDPATE: Our mistake — the Sun actually said the Royal Links property is valued at $43 million without the deed restriction, not $49 million. As is, the Sun says, the land is worth $23.6 million. The difference is $19.4, which leaves Walters (after his $7.2 million payment to lift the deed restriction) with a profit of just $12.2 million. Good thing these numbers are total crap, huh! By the Sun’s own calculations, then, Walters should be able to get a $43 million piece of property for just $7.2 million, a savings of $35.8 million.