So I didn't want to mark this correct until I was actually able to achieve my goal.

Part of the functionality the stakeholders want is the ability to change the time period that's being looked at. This can be achieved with your method by referencing the presentation variable, @{pv_ffy_in}, in both the column formula and the column heading, the latter of which I wasn't sure would actually work. For the prior years, the reference is @{pv_ffy_in -n}. This solution can probably be applied in other situations where the unfriendly nature of calculated items leads to formatting problems.

Thank you for the insight!

The formatting for the narrative view isn't too bad as long as you avoid HTML markup. If you're referencing more than a couple columns in the narrative view and you're using HTML markup, it causes the PDF export to sometimes move the table over to the right. In my case, I have up to 8 column references in some of these titles (yes--this is ridiculous), so I had the same report exporting both left-aligned (with one set of prompt selections), and appearing to be centered (with a different set of prompt selections). Oracle considers the HTML markup to be outside of their support scope, so it's not something that they're explicitly working on fixing. However, using the built-in formatting in the narrative view instead of HTML markup works, at least most of the time. I had one scenario where, to avoid HTML, I had to remove certain filters and columns so I could actually see the results in the analysis editor in order to fix the alignment of a narrative view I was using for a footnote, since that alignment is accessed through the [XYZ] button, and as far as I can tell, nowhere else. In this situation, HTML markup is the much less tedious route, as long as there aren't too many column references. This particular footnote only has one, so both approaches work.