THIS PAST YEAR, OUR Legislature made the deliberate decision to ignore a $155 million deficit the state incurred in 2002, despite a state constitution that clearly prohibits deficits. Lawmakers reasoned that since the state had borrowed the money from itself, paying it back would have simply been too much of a burden in a year when the state already was having to make massive budget cuts — on top of two previous years of scheduled and unscheduled budget cuts — that were crippling vital services.

When Gov. Mark Sanford discovered the situation in August — a discovery that was made when the state ended a second consecutive fiscal year in debt — he demanded immediate action. But legislative leaders argued that the law didn’t allow immediate action. That apparently was true. The more disturbing thing was that some appeared to suggest that addressing the problem next year wouldn’t be much of a priority.

Fortunately, our leaders didn’t do what happens too often with such disagreements — launch a campaign to make the other side look bad, or sulk in their corners. Instead, they decided to try to work out an agreement.

Last week, that effort paid off, when Mr. Sanford, Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman and House Ways and Means Chairman Bobby Harrell announced that they and House Speaker David Wilkins and Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell had reached a compromise, whereby the state would use reserve funds to pay off the debt over the next three years. Their agreement includes changes to state law that should make it impossible for such an intolerable situation to arise again.

The commitment our state’s leaders are showing to fiscal responsibility is not the only thing encouraging about this agreement. In some ways, an even larger issue deals with the less-than-ideal relationship between Mr. Sanford and the Legislature. The agreement suggests that Mr. Sanford is learning the art of compromising with legislators — and that legislators are becoming more willing to reciprocate, rather than simply ignoring or rejecting his ideas. The inability or unwillingness of both sides to do that has been a major stumbling block this year, and getting past that problem will be crucial as Mr. Sanford tries to push through important proposals to deal with everything from taking a realistic approach to our state’s budget problems to overhauling our antiquated system of government.

Of course, while the support of those four top legislators on the deficit repayment plan is essential, they have only four votes. This proposal won’t become law until the entire Legislature agrees to it.

That’s not an automatic thing. Critics call the agreement a shell game and argue that nothing is gained by borrowing money (from reserve funds) to pay off a debt. We too would prefer a more direct repayment, rather than one that takes so many turns to avoid the straight line of paying down the deficit as part of the budget bill. But the reserve-fund plan is not a shell game, because the state constitution requires the Legislature to replenish the funds every year. If critics are willing to get behind a plan to pay off the debt more directly, we’ll be quite interested in what they have to say. But simply letting the deficit sit there another year without taking action to reduce it — as some critics seem to imply they prefer — is not an option.