This is an opinion column.

I recently participated in a panel on Alabama politics before a group of rising community leaders in the Birmingham region. I sat alongside two other gentlemen who called themselves “conservative”.

I eschew labels, as some of you know. Especially in these divisive times. They’re lazy and far too simplistic. They’re narrow boxes that constrict the nuances we all possess—the influences and experiences that shape our views, insights, and perspectives on this and that.

They’re spit wads (circus knives, really) we hurl at one another instead of discussing issues and policies that stir our passions.

Instead of acknowledging the life journey that makes each of us us.

During the session, we found ourselves agreeing more than not, for sure sometimes arm-wrestling on the margins of a matter—doing so amicably, though. With a little more time we might have even found a digestible middle.

It’s a path our state and national lawmakers too rarely pursue. Which serves none of us.

We also agreed on this: Gov. Kay Ivey has a bit of work to do. On her legacy. If she wants to alter it.

If she wants to shift the narrative from where it likely stands. From what her years at the helm of our state will be most known for: Prisons. And not in a good way.

Or prisons and death. Even worse.

Oh, it’s still early, of course, maybe too early to bestow such a verdict on the decisions Ivey makes before leaving office. She was, after all, just sworn in for a second full term in January.

Yet it’s not. Ivey’s been our CEO since 2017 when she filled a seat left a tad slimy by her predecessor, Robert Bentley.

And she’s riding a popularity high. Last fall, while running (skipping really) for re-election, a poll declared Ivey one of the most popular governors in the nation—slotting her seventh with a 60% approval rating.

That’s cool and all, but popularity alone is like a morning donut without coffee—sweet but dry.

The Wilcox native may certainly claim accomplishments. Education funding is at record levels, her gas tax is repairing long-neglected infrastructure statewide, unemployment is historically low, and she’s cut an abundance of ribbons at new business openings (Read: jobs).

And yet, our schools remain at/near the bottom of the nation in educating our students. The graduation rate for our Class of ‘22—the poor kids who finished 9th grade just before the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic—was the state’s lowest (88.2%) since 2017, as reported by my colleague Trish Crain, and 3,000 kids from class dropped out without a diploma.

Our investment in education is laudable, necessary, and too long overdue. But it will likely be years before its long-term effects are discerned.

Additionally, the Republican rode the jet stream of her party’s anti-everything agenda. She signed bills eradicating a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body and a family’s right to determine how to medically treat their transgender child; and eliminating, in an era marked by mass shootings, the need for concealed gun permits, cash-strapping law enforcement agencies across the state.

As a member of the state board of education she also needlessly fanned the flames of found-less fears over our children learning the full breadth of our nation’s history by supporting a resolution banning the teaching of critical race theory in our schools. Banning a high-education construct whining lawmakers and parents can’t correctly define and that isn’t being taught in our schools.

Dictionaries define “legacy” thusly—the long-lasting impact of particular events, actions, etc., that took place in the past, or in a person’s life.

Our prisons stank long before Ivey became governor, no doubt. Yet she’s done all but nothing to address the stench—the unconscionable stench of overcrowding, unchecked inmate-upon-inmate violence, the use of excessive force by staff, woeful medical treatment, and the deaths of too many incarcerated individuals to ignore.

A stench deemed cruel and unusual—unconstitutionally so—by the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a lawsuit against the state is set for trial in November 2024.

Legacy.

A stench further stained by our governor-led eagerness to kill people in the mighty name of law and order. To put criminals to death even when the victim’s family is against it. When we proved time after time, we can’t even get it right.

Legacy.

Ivey’s boldest move is to spend $400 million of COVID-19 relief money provided by the federal government—while regularly snarling at President Joe Biden, a Democrat—to build more prisons. To enrich those who grow rich on the rancid industry while offering little to enrich those most afflicted by it.

Legacy.

It’s still early, of course. Early enough even to shift the narrative of Ivey’s legacy. Tilt it away from prisons and death—to life.

To enhance the lives of Alabamians.

By expanding Medicaid. By ceasing our petulant obstinance to be one of only 12 states to expand the healthcare aid program because federal dollars to support it were created under former President Barack Obama. Millions from the same through from which Ivey is drawing to build prisons—no billions, $2 billion in 2022, according to the independent healthinsurance.org, have been left on the table by our leaders’ political pettiness.

Pettiness that ignores the nuances we all possess—the influences and experiences that shape us, that make us us.

Pettiness that ignores the needs of 304,000 working-class Alabamians who would be covered if the state, if Ivey, expanded Medicaid.

Pettiness that leaves Alabama as the only state in the nation whose Medicaid program does not cover lifesaving tests that screen for two genes that increase the risk for breast cancer, as reported by Amy Yurkinan. The only state.

Shameful legacy.

Pettiness that just might end up costing us more to fund Medicaid—or drop coverage for some Alabamians.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Huma Services announced it is planning to declare the end of the COVID-19 health emergency to fall on May 11, 2023.

The emergency, under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act passed in 2020, prevented states from removing Medicaid recipients from enrollment who might longer qualify for myriad reasons. Cover Alabama Coalition, a contingent of local organizations fighting to expand Medicaid, say 200,000 enrollees kept their insurance under the emergency, as Savanna Tryans-Fernandes reported last August.

During the emergency, the federal government—them again—elevated its payment to states to ease their costs.

On May 11, that subsidy goes poof.

It could then cost millions just to determine who remains covered and who does not.

The most vital debate for our lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session that begins next week —the spate of insipid, time-and-resource inhaling pre-filed bills aside—will be Medicaid expansion.

It’s early enough still for Ivey to elevate the debate beyond political pettiness. To encourage a bipartisan dialogue on Medicaid expansion not based on why we can’t but how we can.

Why we should. Especially in these divisive times.

All it takes is a word from the governor. A word that could save lives.

And elevate a legacy.

More columns by Roy S. Johnson

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Alabama Republican’s ‘parents’ rights’ bill smells like ‘states’ rights’; I’m holding my nose

I was there when Kareem toppled Wilt, felt like I was when greatness was passed again

Saturn rocket’s Inevitable demise evokes memories of childhoods in shadow of emerging space race

Black ex-NYC detective on Black cops Tyre Nichols’ killing: ‘I’ve seen it 1,000 times”

Early release of the 369 is the most compassionate, smartest thing Alabama prisons have ever done.

Birmingham-Southern president reaches out to HBCU peers for support in quest for $37.5 million bailout

Roy S. Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. His column appears in The Birmingham News and AL.com, as well as the Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Reach him at [email protected], follow him at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj