(a) The Legislature hereby finds and declares:
(1) The financial and legal records of California Indian tribes and tribal business enterprises are records of a sovereign nation and are not subject to disclosure by private citizens or the state. This is explicitly recognized in amendments to tribal-state gaming compacts ratified by the Legislature, which provide for the securitization of annual payments to be received from the tribes by the state or by an agency, trust, fund, or entity specified by the state.
(2) In order to review the records of any Indian tribe relative to this securitization, the compacts require the execution of nondisclosure agreements.
(3) State entities statutorily charged with participating in the bond sale cannot perform those duties in the absence of that agreement, and the Legislature hereby acknowledges and agrees that documents containing tribal information are not public records, shall not be discussed in an open meeting, and that state officials privy to that information may execute nondisclosure agreements.
(b) Nothing in Chapter 3.5 of Division 7 of Title 1 (commencing with Section 6250) or any other provision of law shall permit the disclosure of any records of an Indian tribe received by the state, or by an agency, trust fund, or entity specified by the state, in connection with the sale of any portions of the designated tribal-state gaming compact assets or the issuance of bonds, or any summaries or analyses thereof. The transmission of the records, or the information contained in those records in an alternative form, to the state or the special purpose trust shall not constitute a waiver of exemption from disclosure, and the records and information once transmitted to the state or special purpose trust shall be subject to this same exemption from disclosure.
(c) The state and the special purpose trust are authorized to enter into nondisclosure agreements with Indian tribes agreeing not to disclose the materials described in subdivision (b).
(d) The nondisclosure agreements may include provisions limiting the representatives of the state and the special purpose trust authorized to review or receive records of the Indian tribe to those individuals directly working on the sale of portions of the designated compact assets or the issuance of the bonds.
(e) Nothing in Article 9 (commencing with Section 11120) of Chapter 1 of Part 1 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code shall be construed to prevent the bank from conducting a closed session to consider any records or information of an Indian tribe or any summaries or analyses thereof received by the state in connection with the sale of any portion of the compact assets or the issuance of bonds.
(Added by Stats. 2004, Ch. 702, Sec. 6. Effective September 23, 2004.)