Cover Oregon apparently hasn’t learned the lesson that secrecy has a way of backfiring.

Since its April vote to dump the state exchange and transition to the federal system, leaders have been talking privately about reviving the state exchange after only one year, according to The Oregonian.

They haven’t discussed this in public or voted on it, but they did talk about the idea with new Executive Director Aaron Patnode before they hired him, The Oregonian reported.

Officials who knew one thing and said another were key to the fiasco of the Cover Oregon failure less than a year ago. People who knew better kept telling the public that everything would be OK. Even once it was clear the exchange wasn’t working, reassurances kept flowing. Imagine how much better things could have been if leaders had been upfront about problems much earlier so workarounds could have been implemented in a less frantic environment.

The decision in April was to move to the federal exchange, except for the Oregon Health Plan, aka Medicaid, which would use a revamped version of the failed state exchange. Both shifts have price tags in the tens of millions and require some insurance companies to adjust their systems and most applicants to reapply.

Now we learn the secrecy continues, and another shift could happen the following year. Officials have kept that possibility to themselves, with total disrespect for the taxpayers footing the bill and suffering the consequences.