(a)
The director, the Director of General Services, and the advisory committee shall take necessary precautions to assure the confidentiality of the information which is contained in proposals for project agreements, market development plans, progress reports, documents in support of claims for funding under a project agreement, and other pertinent information submitted by individual marketing organizations.
This information is exempt from the California Public Records Act (Chapter 3.5 (commencing with Section 6250) of Division 7 of Title 1 of the Government Code).
(b)
Notwithstanding Article 9 (commencing with Section 11120) of Chapter 1 of Part 1 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code, the advisory committee may hold a closed meeting if an applicant requests that the submitted information not be discussed in an open meeting and the committee determines that it is in the best interest of the program to conduct a closed meeting for that purpose.