This is an opinion column.

When Kay Ivey first ran for governor, she campaigned with folksy ads in which she said cutely cryptic things.

“There’s no step too high for a high-stepper,” Ivey said at every opportunity.

And most folks laughed and moved along without asking an important question: What the heck does that even mean?

Now we know. “High” is the price. And it’s what you and I will pay for Alabama prisons.

On Wednesday, the governor gave her approval to raise what Alabama will pay for a new 4,000-bed mega-prison in Elmore County.

Almost $1 billion.

And as a high-stepper, Kay Ivey doesn’t care if there’s breathable air up here. The cost will keep going up and there’s no limit to what we might have to pay.

It’s worth remembering how many steps we’ve already climbed.

All this began with a plan to build four new prisons — three for the men and one for the women — for about $800 million. That was way back in 2016, when Robert Bentley was still governor.

By 2019, plans had changed, as so had the leadership. Ivey proposed spending $900 million for three prisons, all for the men. The women’s prison got lost in the shuffle but the price stayed the same.

Three for the price of four, but we’re nowhere close to done.

Last year, the state signed contracts to build two prisons for that price, one in Elmore County and one in Escambia.

Two for the price of four …

And most recently, on Wednesday, the Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority, on which Ivey serves, approved spending up to $975 million for the prison in Elmore County.

That’s right. I said the prison. As in singular. A billion dollars just for one.

Whether there will be a second prison in Escambia County is now up in the air — high in the air — but it won’t come from what the Legislature has approved for the project. Lawmakers will have to authorize more.

Ivey approved paying the increase despite the state having signed a contract last year to pay $623 million for the Elmore County prison.

If you signed a contract on a new home and then the builder told you they needed 54 percent more, you’d probably report them to the authorities. But this is government we’re talking about.

And I really wish I could tell you that this prison will cost $1 billion, but here’s the thing — they’re not done designing the thing yet.

“The early estimates were based on a very preliminary design,” Finance Director Bill Poole told AL.com’s Mike Cason. “The design is still not 100 percent complete.”

They don’t know how much this thing is going to cost.

They have never known.

Every time they’ve shared a price with the public, they have been guessing, if not lying.

And whatever they say it will cost today, you can bet what money the state has left in the bank, it will be more tomorrow.

We should have expected this from the moment the state refused to put the projects out for public bid.

Instead, the state developed its prison construction plan almost completely in secret.

When the Alabama Department of Corrections solicited proposals in 2019, it promised the companies that it wouldn’t make their proposals public until the state had signed a contract.

The designs are still a secret — for security purposes, state officials say. We have no idea what sort of prison they’re building.  

When the state finally released the names of the companies that had qualified to compete for the work, one of those companies wasn’t registered with the state, or seemingly any state. It didn’t yet exist.

ADOC officials said then that the phantom company was a joint venture between two or more existing companies, but prison officials refused to say who those companies were. Next, those companies and the state tried to finance construction through novel build-lease agreements that later fell through when underwriters got spooked and bailed.

Finally, Gov. Ivey patched together a financing plan last year with federal COVID money. While other states spent their money on infrastructure, tourism or education, Alabama dedicated its federal dollars to keeping people behind bars.

And now her office has all but admitted the price could go up again.

Before Ivey won a battlefield promotion to replace Bentley, who had resigned in scandal, she served as state treasurer, where she presided over the near-collapse of the state’s Prepaid Affordable College Tuition program. It famously collapsed under her watch. State bailouts saved parents who had paid into the system from getting ripped off — and saved Ivey’s political career.But when asked about it in 2018, Ivey took offense to the topic.

“This is what, 10 days before the election, 11 days, and you’re just now asking this question that happened years and years ago?” Ivey said then. “That makes me wonder.”

It should have made everybody wonder — wonder whether Ivey could be trusted managing the public’s money.

Now we know she can’t.

It is the Legislature’s duty to get a handle on this thing before the damage gets worse.

Until Ivey and the Department of Corrections can explain how the prison construction program caterwauled out of control, lawmakers should put the brakes on all state spending.

We need to know what other bills are coming due we might have to pay.

We need to know how high this thing goes.

We need to know what other surprises Ivey hasn’t yet shared.

Before they pass another budget.

Before they spend a dime of that ARPA money they’re all salivating over.

Before they cut Alabamians that $800 tax refund Ivey has proposed.

Before Kay Ivey can take one more step.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group, 2020 winner of the Walker Stone Award, winner of the 2021 SPJ award for opinion writing, and 2021 winner of the Molly Ivins prize for political commentary.

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