When government operates in secret, no one benefits.

When the Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council refused to make public a document outlining its reasons for recommending approval of the Horse Heaven wind and solar power project near the Tri-Cities, it certainly didn’t benefit.

It lost credibility.

The massive project — among the largest in Washington state — has been ground zero of a pitched battle ever since it was proposed. It would include up to 222 wind turbines on a 25-mile stretch of farmland and more than 5,000 acres of solar panels on farmland near the Tri-Cities.

Its size and the positive and negative impacts it would have on Scout Clean Energy, neighboring farmers, citizens, Native Americans, wildlife and even the fundamental relationship between the state and the county governments have all of the makings of a high-stakes public policy battle.

Scout is based in Boulder, Colo., and is owned by Brookfield Renewable Partners of Toronto, Canada.

The council held public and private hearings on the proposal before voting 5-2 to recommend that Gov. Jay Inslee approve the project. But Adjudicative Order 892, the reasoning behind the vote, was kept secret until this week.

Not even Scout, the company proposing the project, had been informed. “…It is impossible to discern which ‘project’ the council is approving, or whether it is even commercially or technically viable,” Scout President and CEO Michael Rucker wrote to the council.

Opponents of the project are just as confused.

“There’s something out there. I don’t know if that something influenced the decision,” said Tri-City CARES attorney Richard Aramburu. The citizens group has been battling over the visual impact the project would have on the area. Each of the hundreds of turbines would be as tall as the Space Needle in Seattle.

The Yakama Nation has said the buffers meant to protect the tribe’s cultural properties were inadequate.

Farmers in the area have voiced support for the project, which would pay them rent for use of their land.

State wildlife managers wanted to keep the wind turbines 2 miles away from any nests of Ferruginous hawks in the region.

Benton County opposed the project, in part because it was overruled by the state government, calling into question the power the state has given itself in such issues.

Which makes us, and others, wonder why the report was kept secret at first. A spokesman for the council pointed out that, because the council’s hearings were not held under the state’s open meeting law, the report couldn’t be released.

Which is precisely our point. All of the council’s hearings and deliberations should have been open to the public.

We hear a lot of chatter about “transparency” in government and the people’s “right to know.” Then, when the going gets tough, the doors slam shut.

All of the documentation in this case should be public. Until then, we — and everyone else — could only guess what the council’s reasoning was.