Adams County’s recent decision to shift gears on its county health insurance reflects a refreshing change in local government.

Long a bastion of the we’ve-always-done-it-that-way form of local government, on nearly every imaginable matter, county supervisors now seem comfortable in challenging the status quo.

That’s a good thing for taxpayers.

After years of simply repeating the previous year’s spending practices, county leaders — including county administrator Joe Murray — seem to have finally gotten their hands around some of the biggest fiscal tar babies around.

Such work cannot be done once and forgotten.

It is a constant process of understanding how county processes work — or don’t work — and how through hard work and determination, leaders can refine the work.

Streamlining the processes can potentially either save the county money or get more work for the money already being spent.

Either way, taxpayers win.

We hope the attention paid to county health care costs will carry over to other large expenditures in the county as well.

Challenging why things are necessary, as opposed to just accepting that they are and going back to the status quo, is the fastest and best way to make government reform meaningful.

Supervisors have a good start with revamping the health care insurance coverage, but many, many more potential fiscal challenges exist.