Question
Can a city council vote to open a closed session agenda item for the public record?
Answer
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.
Asked & Answered posts should not be relied on as legal advice, and FAC makes no guarantees about their completeness or accuracy. All posts carry a date of publication that readers should take note of in assessing their usefulness, given that laws and interpretations of them may change over time. Posts predating Jan. 1, 2023, that discuss the California Public Records Act may contain statute numbers no longer in use. Please see this page for a table showing how the California Public Records Act has been renumbered.