This is an opinion column.

One of my fellow Birmingham-Southern College alumni called this morning, morose over Gov. Kay Ivey’s refusal to give the college what it needs to survive.

As part of a three-year financial recovery plan — or a bailout — the liberal arts college is seeking $30 million from the state as a bridge until it can replenish its endowment with private donations.

The college has a week to decide whether to roll the dice or pull the plug. Meanwhile, the governor’s office says it has no intentions of giving BSC what it’s asking for — never mind that Ivey found $25 million for a foundering Montgomery water park and a $100 million quarterback sneak for more prison construction.

“Is she just going to let the college die?” he asked.

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “She lets people die all the time and it hasn’t bothered her yet.”

As much as I’d like to see my alma mater live to fight on, it’s hardly the only one with hat in hand.

Among the others is Medicaid.

And more than 280,000 Alabamians stuck in the healthcare coverage gap — working people who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford private insurance.

Ever since Gov. Ivey took office, folks like me have been asking her whether the state would finally bite the bullet and expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

The arguments have been solid from the beginning — whatever match the state would have to pay, it would quickly recapture in taxes from the hospitals and other health care providers that would provide services. The Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama found expansion could save the state $400 million per year.

The state has given up billions in federal money. I’ve long ago lost count. It has let rural hospitals close and suffer, further hurting the small towns that depend on their services. We might never know how many Alabamians went bankrupt or how many died.

Other states, including North Carolina which approved its Medicaid expansion this week, have given up their stubborn resistance to the Obama-era program.

But every time she’s been asked, Ivey has thrown up her hands and asked where’s the matching money, like we’re asking her to turn water into wine.

Now it’s clear that wasn’t merely an excuse. It was a lie, too. If you’re a prison contractor or an amusement park developer, Ivey won’t just turn your whitewater into wine, she’ll stock a full bar.

Ivey hasn’t funded Medicaid expansion because she doesn’t want to. She can’t do it without admitting she was wrong and that’s embarrassing for her.

End of story.

Meanwhile, she’s finding ways to help government contractors get paid and shifting school dollars to private interests that have nothing to do with education.

Ivey’s proposed supplemental Education Trust Fund budget has included more than $300 million of non-education expenses. The document itself obscures what some of them are, but with a little digging we’ve dragged a few of those things into the light.

There’s $25 million for the Montgomery Whitewater project, which her proposal directed through the Montgomery County Commission because putting “whitewater park” in the budget might have given the whole game away.

And there’s $100 million more for prison construction, which it channels through the state’s community college system. I’m not sure when the community college system last built prison facilities, but it seems like it would have been less trouble giving that money directly to the Department of Corrections.

Unless the point was to keep people from seeing her do that very thing.

In addition to those allocations, Ivey has proposed $200 million for the Main Street Alabama program, which helps small towns revitalize their downtown districts.

Because who needs an emergency room nearby when you can have decorative street lamps?

Remember, this is all coming out of a budget otherwise marked for schools and teachers and classrooms.

There’s $31 million for the Mobile Airport to shuffle facilities there, and $25 million for the Port of Alabama to upgrade its coal loading facilities so private Alabama coal companies can ship their product.

There’s $10 million for the Alabama Department of Commerce to buy private companies land to develop.

And there’s $5 million for the World Games, a thing which already happened in Birmingham but ran over budget. The World Games CEO already said he’d get that money from private sources, but apparently “private” meant the state.

PREVIOUS: An innocent man is on death row. Alabama officials seem OK with that.

The last credible argument the state could make for not using its budget surpluses to expand Medicaid was that the money was stuck in the Education Trust Fund. That’s one of the two state budgets, the other being the General Fund which pays for just about everything beyond schools. But taxes in the Education Trust Fund are earmarked for education expenses alone.

This has been a blood/brain barrier of Alabama politics — keeping the peace between education interests and general fund interests like prisons and Medicaid for decades.

But now it seems to have been breached.

It was breached on purpose. And it was breached with the intent that regular folks and maybe even lawmakers, too, not understand how big a transfer was happening.

Now everybody can see it. And everybody can see just who Kay Ivey really is.

Ivey has made clear what her priorities are.

She’s fine slipping public money to prison construction and a struggling white water boat ride.

But not to Alabamians trapped and drowning in medical expenses they can’t pay.

More columns by Kyle Whitmire

Alabama governor wants $100 million of school funds for prison construction

Alabama governor sends education dollars to water park

Alabama’s billion-dollar no-bid prison disaster is only the beginning

Kay Ivey’s billion-dollar surprise

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