Governor Bentley

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley speaks at a Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County update luncheon at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville Wednesday April 13, 2016. (Bob Gathany/bgathany@AL.com)

(Bob Gathany)

In his 2015 State of the State address, Gov. Robert Bentley told us the state was broke.

"We cut," he said.

"We trimmed," he said.

"We closed," he said.

"We consolidated," he said

"We did without," he said.

"We made sacrifices," he said.

But all that wasn't enough, the governor argued. Alabama would need hundreds of millions in tax increases to balance its budget.

At the time, it seemed like a fair speech, if not a good one, but today it seems like a lot of hogwash.

Less than three months before Gov. Bentley stood before the Alabama Legislature pleading poverty on the state's behalf -- when Alabama was supposedly doing all that cutting and trimming and consolidating and doing without -- the governor had his protection detail fetch his wallet from his home in Tuscaloosa and bring it to him at the beach.

If that's sacrifice, then hang me from a cross.

The governor now swears he didn't know his security detail used a helicopter to make that delivery, but how are we to believe him anymore?

Never mind that. Why does it matter?

The truth is that the governor, the day after Christmas, stormed out of his Tuscaloosa home after having an argument with his wife. He drove to the beach to get away from her (and maybe toward someone else, depending on which version of the story you believe). He made a stupid mistake that we all make from time to time, but rather than sucking up his pride and turning his truck around, he called on his security to spend state dollars to fix things for him.

Acting ALEA Secretary Stan Stabler says that he got permission from up the chain of command to use the state helicopter. The man he says OK'd the flight, now-former Sec. Spencer Collier, says that isn't true.

But what does that matter, either?

All these folks are public employees. The governor might be their boss, but they work for you -- the Alabama taxpayer. When a governor calls his bodyguard to fetch his wallet and bring it to the beach, there's only one right answer to that request.

"Governor, why don't you get your own damn wallet?"

I'm sure there's a complicated way to figure out how much that flight cost. You could add the fuel they burned to the pilot's time to the wear and tear on the aircraft. But the easiest way is to figure what a similar flight, if you hired someone to do it, would set you back.

The flight logs show the helicopter, a Bell OH-58, spent four hours in the air. If you chartered four hours of time on a similar private helicopter, that would set you back about $4,000.

(A spokeswoman for ALEA said Friday that the trip had cost only $1380.)

What the governor should have done is open up that wallet, the moment it hit his hand, and pay back the people of Alabama what it cost to fetch it. Instead, he seems to have bought a cheeseburger, or something.

"You have to have your wallet for security reasons," he told reporters Thursday. "I'm the governor. And I had to have money. I had to buy something to eat. You have to have identification."

You have to have identification. This is the man who, months later, attempted to close 31 drivers license offices, which would have left 28 Alabama counties without a place to get one.

But the governor didn't stop there. He recounted his conversation with Stabler about why he didn't remember anything about a helicopter.

"He said, 'Governor you don't remember it because you didn't do it,' " Bentley recalled.

"He said, "You had to have your wallet for security reasons and you needed it as quickly as you could get it.

"He said, 'I dispensed that. I ran it up the chain of command,' and he said 'I was the one that requested that, not you and that's why I didn't remember it.' "

There's never been a man so desperate to show he has his story straight. You see, the reason he pleads "security" is because that clears this whole thing under the law. It makes the trip legal.

The governor admits that the whole thing looks bad, and as a licensed dermatologist, he should be an expert in what looks bad.

But this is about a lot more than cosmetics. It's about a lot more than the $4,000 or so that it cost Alabama taxpayers.

It's about the ability to look Alabama taxpayers in the eye and ask them to open their wallets.

But who would blame them now if they said ...

Sorry, governor, I left mine at home.

Edited Friday, April 15, to include cost estimate from ALEA.