This is an opinion column.

In every movie or documentary about the Titanic, there’s a moment when the ship has hit the iceberg but few folks aboard understand what’s about to happen. Then some dutiful engineer rolls out the blueprints and explains the bad news — the oceanliner’s wound is a mortal one.

What follows next is several minutes of crew and passengers shaking off their disbelief, realizing that they have an hour to find a lifeboat or build their own.

Such a scene, right now, is the Alabama Legislature.

Gov. Kay Ivey’s prison plan is a disaster. Hardly anybody in Montgomery seems to appreciate the seriousness — yet. And if they don’t act fast, they’ll go down with the ship.

And so will Alabama taxpayers.

I would roll the blueprints out for you, but Alabama Department of Corrections officials say releasing such things is a security risk (more on that in a second).

But let me walk you through this, anyway.

Last week, a committee you might never have heard of, the Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority, committed the state to pay $975 million for one prison, instead of the $623 million the state had already said it would pay for this prison.

This was something of a surprise, as the state signed a contract last year for the lower price.

That’s a one billion-dollar, 4,000-bed prison.

Or to put it another way, the state will spend at least $243,750 per inmate bed. That’s about $100,000 more than a typical Alabama home.

State Sen. Greg Albritton, whose district would benefit from the second proposed prison, blamed rising prices.

“Can you spell inflation?” Republican Sen. Greg Albritton, a member of the authority, said when asked about the increase. “Every construction project that we have that is ongoing is experiencing this same phenomenon.”

But this isn’t a spelling bee. It’s math. And since the senator can’t tell the difference, perhaps I can help with the numbers.

We’re looking at a year-to-year increase of 54 percent while overall inflation has been a little less than 7 percent.

Even with higher jumps in some sectors, inflation alone doesn’t explain what’s happened here.

And here’s a little more math.

Last year, the Alabama Legislature approved $1.3 billion for two prisons. Now Gov. Kay Ivey and a handful of her handpicked committee members had committed most of that money to build the first one.

That should have leave $300 million to build the second prison.

Only, it hasn’t worked out that way.

When Alabama lawmakers approved Ivey’s prison plan last year, the financing included $725 million in bond debt. However, rising interest rates made long-term government bonds unattractive. The bond markets bought only $509 million of those bonds, leaving the state about $216 million short.

That leaves the state with less than $100 million to build another billion-dollar prison.

There’s a $900 million hole in our ship.

B.L Harbert International was supposed to build the second prison in Escambia County, but the firm is said to have backed out. The company has not returned a request for comment. Regardless of whether the state still has a builder, no one has broken ground in Escambia County.

If officials really did think inflation was the cause of their cost increases, you’d think there would be a sense of urgency to get this thing going before costs go up even more. Action speaks louder than words, they say, but in this case, inaction speaks loudest of all.

The state leaders committed our tax dollars to pay for something when they had absolutely no idea what it was going to cost — not a surprise, as the state didn’t put any of this out of public bid and kept the entire process a state secret.

Yep, this whole thing is one great big no-bid project.

To date, the state has not made public what these prisons will look like, citing security concerns. They haven’t shared a site plan or an artist’s rendering — things that anybody with a computer will one day be able to see with Google Earth.

The Alabama House General Fund budget chairman says there’s no reason to panic.

“We’re fortunate,” state Rep. Rex Reynolds told my colleague Mike Cason. “We’ve got a good budget right now. We met this morning with the executive budget office looking forward on what we do. And eventually if we get in the position to have to come back to the (House) and ask for money, certainly I’ll have to stand up there and defend that.”

Reynolds best not get comfortable sitting down. I called him to ask why he considered anything about the situation “fortunate.” I haven’t heard back yet.

Rather than patching the big hole in the ship, lawmakers are busy creating new ones.

This week, the Alabama Legislature will take up new mandatory minimums — which are suddenly back in style after having failed for decades — for fentanyl-related drug crimes.

We’re going to put more people in prison. Because that worked so well on meth and cocaine, or marijuana and opioids.

At the same time, we’re letting fewer folks out.

The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles has gotten so stingy that it now denies parole in 94 percent of cases. One of those was a man named Frederick Bishop, whose release the board denied despite Bishop having died more than a week before.

A spokesman for Pardons and Paroles said the board didn’t know Bishop had died. But if the parole board doesn’t know whether a prisoner is living or dead, how much attention is it really giving these cases?

Alabama is doing nothing to alleviate prison overcrowding.

Which brings us back to the prisons.

The two proposed mega-prisons are replacing old ones being taken out of service.

Even if Alabama finds a way to finance the two proposed prisons, those new facilities won’t increase the state’s prison capacity.

That’s right. Alabama might spend as much as $2 billion — supposing the second prison costs the same as the first and supposing the state can find the money — and still have the same overcrowding problem it started with.

We’re taking on water faster than we can bail.

And all Alabama lawmakers can say is full speed ahead.

More columns by Kyle Whitmire

Kay Ivey’s billion-dollar surprise

This contraption would cost Alabama schools $1.7 billion

Alabama won big at the Oscars. Why aren’t our public officials acting like it?

Steve Marshall is Alabama’s most dangerous politician