Rick, thanks for another great article.
I quite like the waterfall approach. I placed the thick mark values on the X2 axis, so the text is closer to the DATALABEL values.

title "NC Inspection Amounts";
title2 "Cascade Chart (Waterfall Chart)";
proc sgplot data=NCInspection;
waterfall category=Agency response=Cost / datalabel finalbartickvalue="Total Cost" x2axis;
x2axis display=(nolabel) colorbands=odd ;
yaxis grid display=(nolabel) offsetmin=0;
run;

What do you think?