A little more than two years ago, Adams County Supervisors declared, “We are one.”

The motto they adopted on Jan. 3, 2012, was one that in many ways was refreshing. After several years of a highly divided and acrid board, the new supervisors decided to take a radical departure from the previous administrations.

Like many residents, we heralded the move as a positive one. Countless Adams County residents were simply tired of seeing their former elected officials scrapping and fighting like elementary school children in public meetings.

Everything seemingly was going along well until suddenly a few board members recently realized their collective lethargy on Natchez Regional Medical Center matters was coming back to haunt them.

After seemingly trusting hospital leaders, supervisors are stuck with no answers and no explanation on how the public hospital could become bankrupt on their watch.

Even after appointing new hospital board of trustee members in January 2013, county supervisors still lacked consistent communication on hospital matters.

As public ire grows over how the hospital — again — got into such bad financial shape, pressure builds on county supervisors.

Their solidarity and lockstep unity seems to be waning, fortunately. That’s evident by supervisors now speaking their minds publicly about how irritated they are with the hospital’s work in secrecy.

While cooperating and treating one another with civility should always be the rule of the day, supervisors are learning a tough lesson — failing to speak up and ask questions for the people who elected them comes back to bite, one way or another.