This is an opinion column.

Alabama deserves to know.

But every time, this state’s voters get left in the dark until it’s too late.

In 2014, when Gov. Robert Bentley ran for reelection, Alabama deserved to know he’d try to raise taxes.

Instead, the governor insisted there wasn’t a hole in the General Fund Alabama couldn’t dig its way out of. He refused to debate his opponent, despite all the nyah-naying from folks like me saying debates are important to democracy. He ignored the criticism, continued to lie, and then, after voters gave him another term, he announced Alabama would need to raise taxes.

Alabama deserved to know.

In 2018, Gov. Kay Ivey got mealy-mouthed on the campaign trail when the subject of gas taxes came up. Just like her predecessor, she refused to debate her opponents, and not just her Democratic opponent in the general election, but her fellow Republicans in the primary, too. More nyah-nyahing from me, more silence from her. Voters gave her first elected term in the governor’s office.

Only then, at the start of the Legislative session, did she give us the truth. Not only did she fully support raising the state’s gas tax, but freshman lawmakers had been screened before they had run for office the year before. Anyone who said they weren’t on board with the gas tax was encouraged not to run, Ivey revealed in an interview.

Alabama deserved to know.

When a reporter asked Steve Marshall whether he’d keep the state’s lead corruption prosecutor, Matt Hart, on the job if Marshall were elected to AG (a position Bentley had appointed him to), Marshall said he would. He was elected. And then he didn’t.

Alabama deserved to know.

And whether Alabama knows it or not, it’s wheelwell-deep in this same muck again. There’s something we all deserve to know, and I have to expect we’ll only learn after the next election.

We’re creeping up on four years since a jury in Lee County found Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard guilty. Since the jury didn’t accept his lawyers’ argument that Hubbard couldn’t understand a law he helped pass, Hubbard’s folks have taken that argument to the appellate courts — first to the Court of Criminal Appeals, which upheld all but one of the dozen counts against the former speaker.

Then it went to the Alabama Supreme Court, which heard arguments in that case in June.

And we’re still waiting.

And Alabama deserves to know.

We deserve to know, first, because the outcome of that case could have a huge impact on how our ethics laws will work, if they’ll work at all. The Legislature convenes next week, which means lawmakers will be there to — cough, gag, cough — fix the law if the court finds it lacking.

We deserve to know, second, because until the court rules, any other ethics cases will be up in the air, and prosecutors could use the uncertainty as an excuse not to charge public officials using their offices to enrich themselves.

We deserve to know, third, because a full-fledged scuttling of the ethics laws could give special interests free rein of this state.

We deserve to know, finally, because this is an election year. One of those justices, Greg Shaw is up for reelection. He has a primary challenger, state Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster. A few voters might like to know now, not later, where Shaw stands before walking into a voting booth.

You can argue whether it’s appropriate to vote for judges based on their records on the bench, but if that’s wrong, then we need to end judicial elections altogether.

But as long as we have an elected judiciary, then …

Alabama deserves to know.

And I can’t shake the feeling we’re going to be left in the dark again.

Left in the dark until it’s too late, until we shake our fists and say ...

Alabama deserved to know.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

You can follow his work on his Facebook page, The War on Dumb.

And on Twitter.

And on Instagram.

More true today than when I wrote this in September. Lot's of people are above the law, not just the president, but a whole class of crooks — and there is solid data to show it. https://t.co/5OTjYLN3QT — Kyle Whitmire (@WarOnDumb) January 30, 2020

More columns by Kyle Whitmire