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Campaign records show governor spent more than $380,000 in 2016, mostly on lawyers and Rebekah Mason.

Last year wasn't an election year, but Gov. Robert Bentley blew through his campaign funds like he was running for something.

Or maybe, from something.

According to campaign finance records filed Tuesday, Bentley began 2016 with nearly $350,000 in his campaign account. But when the year was done, he was $24,021 in the hole, a difference he had to make up late last year with a loan out of his own pocket.

Most of the money went to pay lawyers, but some, early in the year, went to pay his senior political advisor at the center of a state capitol sex scandal, Rebekah Caldwell Mason.

During non-election years, Alabama elected officials must file annual reports due the last day in January. The report, which Bentley filed on the last day before the deadline, gives the first real peek into the costs of the governor's scandals last year.

According to the filing, Bentley paid $260,038 Melton, Espy & Williams, a Montgomery law firm that represented him until late last year.

In November, Bentley paid $50,000 to another firm, Waller, Landsen, Dortch and Davis.

The $50,000 payment to Waller would have put Bentley's campaign account in the red, except for a simultaneous loan of $50,000 to the campaign Bentley made personally.

Under Alabama law, Bentley was supposed to report that $50,000 loan as a "major contribution" within two days of the transaction, but the governor did not file a major contribution report until last week, potentially a Class B misdemeanor.

Also, campaign records show, the governor accepted a $11,641 contribution from the Republican Governor's Association last March, money the governor used to repay the state for a trip to an RGA conference in Las Vegas.

Mason and three other staffers attended the conference with the governor. While other governors who attended the conference were reimbursed, all others were paid for commercial travel. Bentley used the state airplane.

That reimbursement also could put Bentley afoul of Alabama's campaign finance law, which prohibits officials from accepting payments until 12 months before an election or more than 120 days after an election. The RGA payment fell outside that window.

An intentional violation of that section of Alabama's campaign finance law is a class B felony.

Not all of Bentley's campaign spending went to lawyers. Last year, the governor paid $37,412 to Mason's company, RCM Communications.

Those payments of $8,000 a month plus travel expenses ended two weeks after Mason resigned in the wake of their scandal.

The governor had built up the balance in late 2015 using a campaign finance loophole that allows candidates to continue raising money after an election when they have campaign debt. That money, now, is all gone.

In its place, Bentley has $50,000 of campaign debt, which he owes to himself, and an ending balance of $25,979 with which to pay it. The governor could repay himself that money with new campaign contributions only if he were to run for another office.