The newspaper accounts yesterday of plans for the 26-acre Hudson Yards site on Manhattan’s West Side featured renderings of parks and proposed headquarters for Morgan Stanley, Condé Nast, and News Corp. The only things missing were price tags, which is a strange way to run an auction for a publicly owned site.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority surprised developers Wednesday when it e-mailed them to release their plans to the press on Sunday at a storefront in Midtown. The five bidders scrambled to put something together that would reflect the millions of dollars they have spent on proposals. Yet the MTA has not released a single dollar figure for any of these plans. So how can the public make a judgment?

Bids expected to top $1 billion and the platform over the rail yards estimated to cost as much as $1.5 billion. Yet the MTA argues that it cannot release any dollar figures on what the developers are prepared to pay them without compromising the bidding process. Why should public bidding, which helps drive up the price of, say, a painting, not help the MTA gain the best price for its West Side holding?

The subsidies required for a Jets-Olympics Stadium helped kill the proposal — and the Olympics in New York City — the last time the MTA tried a less-than-transparent giveaway of the rail yards site. Developers claim it is too early to release the cost of the projects. They are still working out the final details, they say, and the projects are so complex that it would be difficult to provide one single dollar amount. The plans include revenue-sharing agreements with the MTA, estimates of rents at the different building sites, and staggered payments over several years. Even when the financing plans are released, it will be difficult to compare the plans on an apples-to-apples basis.

Without any numbers at all, though, it’s impossible to compare the plans. If Governor Spitzer is serious about bringing a new spirit of reform and openness to state government, one way to demonstrate it would be to increase the transparency of the process of selecting a developer for this site. It’s not just the MTA board members that need to be privy to the economics of these bids, but the press and the public. Anything less is an inappropriate way to dispose of a public asset.