At first glance, the news that the Southeastern Public Service Authority is considering raises for its employees was a worrisome nugget that encouraged skepticism about whether the regional waste authority had learned any lessons from the financial debacle that defined its fiscal policies for the past 20 years or more.

It would be easy to condemn the agency for even proposing pay raises when its member municipalities are having so much trouble making ends meet this year and the taxpayers who ultimately fund SPSA’s activities through waste disposal fees face another season of unemployment, reduced pay and depressed home values.

But upon further inspection, one must be prepared to admit that this does not appear to be the SPSA of the 1990s or the 2000s. There was a time when SPSA was synonymous with financial mismanagement. Pundits could have made their careers complaining about the wasted money and frittered resources associated with the agency. Proposed employee raises in that environment were easy targets for SPSA’s critics.

But it’s harder to criticize the proposal this time around, because there appears to be a solid move toward real accountability, an acknowledgment of the reality of the world in which SPSA exists today.

Of course, the agency seeks a 3-percent raise for employees, but it also would reduce the staff by the equivalent of 4.5 full-time employees. And despite the fact that SPSA management expects to pay more than $82,000 in Midtown and Downtown Tunnel tolls in the next fiscal year that do not exist in the current budget, the new proposed budget reflects a 9-percent decrease over the current year. At the same time, though, member localities that pay for disposal of their garbage at the regional landfill located in Suffolk would enjoy a $20-per-ton decrease in the cost of doing so.

Finally, in a nod to the need to plan for the future, a $16-million surplus in the current budget would be used to pay off debt early and to make an early contribution to the fund that eventually will be used to pay for closing the landfill.

Thriftiness in the current year that leads to early retirement of debts, along with savings for participating localities, all point to a new way of doing business at SPSA and new hope for the taxpayers who fund the agency. Maybe that hope alone is sufficient reason to approve the plan that would give SPSA’s remaining employees modest raises.