State lawmakers file

a bill that would make ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft no longer subject to the fees and vehicle inspections required by Orlando and other Florida cities.

A government should never agree to keep secrets about how it is spending your money.

But that’s exactly what a deal between Uber and the cities of Altamonte Springs, Maitland, Longwood, Lake Mary and Sanford does.

It’s an outrage and an affront to the idea that local governments should operate openly and transparently.

The suburban cities’ deals with Uber started with good-enough intentions.

From the earliest talks about SunRail, one of the biggest hurdles was how riders would get from the stations to their final destinations in places such as Altamonte Springs or Maitland where the stations aren’t close to where people work and shop.

The cities were disappointed when long-running plans fell through for Lynx to develop a special bus system that would deliver train riders to and from the stations on demand.

Then last year brought a welcome solution.

Five cities contracted with Uber to offer those on-demand rides to SunRail stations and elsewhere within their cities at a reduced rate to passengers.

Maybe the private ride-sharing service could finally accomplish what the government couldn’t — and at a fraction of the cost.

The cities each agreed to lower Uber fares in their towns by paying Uber 20 percent of fares that begin and end within city borders and 25 percent of fares that start or stop at SunRail.

You know what they say about things that sound too good to be true.

Only, in this case, we have no way of knowing.

As the Orlando Sentinel’s Ryan Gillespie recently reported, the cities’ contracts with Uber are more secretive than some U.S. intelligence reports.

Even the most basic facts about this public transportation program, such as how much it costs and how many people are using it to get to SunRail, are considered confidential.

“Uber considers all trip data and audit data maps to constitute trade secrets of Uber and exempt from public disclosure,” states one part of the agreement with the cities.

Ah, the old trade-secret loophole.

This is the same baloney we heard when Visit Florida didn’t want anyone to know how much it was paying PitBull to promote our “sexy beaches.”

In both cases, we aren’t talking about the formula of the moisturizer PitBull uses to give his bald head just the right sheen or even how Uber promotes its app and the technology behind it.

We’re talking about the public expenditure of tax dollars. That should never be a secret. We saw how well that turned out for PitBull and Visit Florida. After it was eventually disclosed that the state tourism agency paid the singer $1 million for a few

Twitter hashtags and a cheesy video of women in swimsuits, the leader of Visit Florida resigned.

Altamonte Springs City Manager Frank Martz said the cities agreed to the terms because, at the time, a court ruling in South Florida supported Uber’s contention that the information is a trade secret, though that ruling has been revised and is being appealed.

“We are an advocate for open government,” Martz said. “We are also an advocate for aggressively finding efficiencies for our residents. There aren’t a lot of cost-effective solutions, so it’s important somebody step up and try something new. And we did.”

In the case of the cities’ contracts with Uber, several city officials have indicated they expect the costs to be minimal, perhaps less than $10,000 for the yearlong test program that ends in July.

How large or small the expense may be isn’t the point.

The Uber deal is every bit as troubling as PitBull’s because it is yet another example of taxpayers being shut out of the process.

How are we supposed to know if the Uber pilot is successful if we don’t know how much it costs and whether people were even using it for SunRail?

Sure, city officials are privy to the information, but the contract also puts a muzzle on city officials.

The terms state that neither the city nor Uber can issue a news release or otherwise talk about the agreement without “prior written consent.”

So much for government in the sunshine.

The city councils in all five cities agreed to the terms. They put this on themselves. It’s all spelled out in the terms of the contract.

If city officials say they didn’t know what they were getting into, then they approved an item they either didn’t read or didn’t understand.

That isn’t any consolation to taxpayers, who deserve better.