That's exactly the call that gets made again and again, by managers. They rarely value code quality; so easy to dismiss with "that's just a refactor". Converse all you want. Business folk are not going to believe that Engineering isn't foolish and just "costing the company money".

That's the culture difference between working in a cost center and working in a profit center. If you just tell business our code is messy and we want to make it nicer, they will tell you to fuck off. Tell them you need to reduce operational risk and maintenance costs. You need to meet each other halfway.