Most observers of the state budget process in South Carolina – as well as in many other states – would agree that the past few years have been extremely difficult and that lawmakers, faced with declining revenues, have been forced to make difficult choices regarding state services. The contention of David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson in their book, The Price of Government: Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis, is that we are now in an era when such revenue shortfalls are almost a permanent condition. In his review of this work in this issue of Public Policy & Practice, Ed Thomas describes the new approach to budgeting recommended by these authors, which produces a priority ranking of all the existing activities of government. This review points out the potential value of this approach as well noting some of its weaknesses, and offers some ideas as to how a state might apply this approach in developing a long-term process for improving performance.

In Richard Young’s piece on aging, he provides a broad outline of some of the challenges faced by an aging population, both nationally and in South Carolina. As he points out, the percentage of the United States population that is age 65 or older has grown significantly in recent years, including a substantial increase in the “oldest old” (those age 85 or older). As these changes in the composition of the population occur, they have had – and will increasingly have – an impact on areas such as health care, the labor force, the demand for recreational and leisure time activities, housing and transportation, as well as on government programs such as Social Security and Medicaid.

In Jim Cumberland’s article, “The South Carolina Environmental Innovations Pilot Program,” he describes a program of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control that allows manufacturing facilities greater flexibility in meeting environmental regulatory requirements. The South Carolina Environmental Innovations Pilot Program represents one means through which the state has attempted to implement a more flexible regulatory program that provides for cooperation between state regulators and industrial facilities. Through this program the state intends to reward businesses for making innovative improvements to their environmental operations.

As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions on the contents of the journal. Please e-mail any comments to young-richard@sc.edu.