Three years ago, the federal government handed Alabama a check for $1.8 billion. The world was in the early, uncertain throes of the coronavirus pandemic. The federal money was supposed to help with state revenue shortfalls and pandemic-related costs.

Lawmakers came up with a fat proposal: A new Alabama State House.

The proposed price tag of $200 million.

At the time, I objected, because, at the time, I didn’t foresee where the money would eventually go.

Mostly, prisons.

As other states spent their “covid money” on public welfare, schools and infrastructure. Alabama diverted its share toward bigger, badder buildings with bars — two new mega prisons.

Had I known, I might have kept my mouth shut and my fingers off the keyboard.

My apologies.

Because, the thing is, Alabama needs a new State House for lots of reasons, not just to give Alabama lawmakers better offices (which is probably the worst reason). The current Alabama State House is a sorry, awful, dingy, disgusting dump. There’s another word for it, but it was already impolite to print before Donald Trump made it kinda racist. Anyone who’s been in the place will understand. It’s gross. It’s an embarrassment.

For anyone who doesn’t visit Goat Hill regularly, it might be difficult to understand the need.

First of all, the capitol looks good on TV. The steps are marble and the rotunda is pretty. The statues and paintings are neat, too, as long as you don’t think too much about what they represent.

So why all the bellyaching from lawmakers and lobbyists? Marble and mahogany isn’t good enough for them?

The thing is, that’s not the State House. That’s the old capitol and it’s pretty much a museum.

The building where lawmakers work is across the street.

Borrowed from the Alabama Department of Transportation in the 1980s, the Alabama State House was supposed to be a temporary home during a more extensive refit at the old Alabama Capitol. The pilfered building had space for committee meetings, which the old capitol lacked, and more importantly, it had offices for lawmakers, however tiny.

The Legislature never gave it back.

But it came with problems, too, the first of which being it wasn’t built to be a state house.

The hallways are narrow, the ceilings are low and most public areas don’t have windows.

The front entrance feels like the back entrance, and every floor feels like a basement. In fact, the floor that feels least like a basement might be the actual basement, where lawmakers sneak off to smoke on the loading dock.

Accessibility is a cruel joke.

To get to the Senate gallery, you have to take an elevator, get off that elevator and then take another elevator the rest of the way.

Hospitals have better architecture.

On top of all that, there are technical issues with no easy solutions. The elevators and air conditioning are so outdated

The problem here, however, isn’t that the Alabama State House isn’t good for public officials. The problem is that it isn’t good for the public.

Everything inside screams, “you’re not supposed to be here.” Outside, it’s possible to walk right by the thing and not know what it is.

“First we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us,” Winston Churchill said when Great Britain rebuilt the House of Commons after the London blitz.

Alabama’s State House isn’t to blame for the people we send to work there, but dang if it doesn’t send them a message. When every room is a backroom, backroom deals are what you’ll get.

We can and should do better.

No one has fixed this problem, because doing so can be political self-destruction, perhaps worse than lawmakers giving themselves raises.

But it’s possible to defer a need for so long that it becomes absurd.

It’s time to give lawmakers a pass (with conditions).

The old Alabama capitol is basically a museum to the Confederacy. You can take the signage down and scrape the artwork from the rotunda walls, but won’t erase the fact that is where the Confederacy was born.

But there is a lot more to Alabama than the Civil War and our most important public buildings should reflect that. Alabama needs a building with purpose outside the few months each year when the Legislature is in session.

Alabama needs a space that’s part government office building and part hall of history, where schoolchildren can go and learn something about Alabama they can be proud of. Adults, too.

Alabama needs a space that memorializes its true heroes, people such as John Lewis and Rosa Parks, rather than Confederate rascals.

Alabama needs statues and exhibits that, if lawmakers had to walk past those reminders of struggle and sacrifice, they might think twice about the job they’re there to do.

It needs a space that connects Alabama’s past to its future.

The time wasn’t right three years ago.

But it’s right now.

It’s time to get Alabama’s State House in order.

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.