Opening closed session in mid-meeting

Q: Can a city council vote to open a closed session agenda item for the public record?

A: There are at least two possible answers to your question, depending on the particular situation.
First, after a closed session, a city council is generally required to disclose certain information about that closed session and any action taken in closed session. What has to be publicly disclosed, and how quickly, depends on what the justification was for the closed session and what action, if any, was taken. However, in that circumstance, it would usually not be the case that everything discussed in the closed session would be publicly disclosed.

Second, there could certainly be occasions when a city council would decide, during or after a closed session, that the item under discussion should not have been the subject of a closed session in the first place. In such a case, one way to correct the mistake would be to disclose, on the public record, what occurred in the closed session.