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The first round of the “Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis v. The Walt Disney Company” fight, held last spring, ended in a clear DeSantis victory and Disney defeat. Following Disney’s vocal opposition to Florida’s commonsense Parental Rights in Education Act, misleadingly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Florida passed a law to abolish the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which in 1967 incentivized Disney’s initial planting of a flag in Central Florida by giving the corporation unparalleled government-like powers over basic municipal services such as zoning, building codes, and waste treatment.
Disney thus paid the price for coming out in favor of indoctrinating impressionable kindergarteners in vogue gender ideology and queer theory by having its gratuitous, extra-legal corporate welfare rescinded, putting it on an equal playing field with every other corporation operating in the state of Florida.
Not content to merely get smacked around once, apparently, Disney under former and since-reinstated CEO Bob Iger has opted to attempt a not-so-clever end-around that would thwart the will of Floridians, as represented by the Florida Legislature, and entrench Disney’s peculiar legal arrangement in Central Florida for another 30 years. Try as Disney might, the forthcoming result will be a familiar one: Florida and DeSantis are going to win again, and Disney is going to lose again.
On Feb. 10, Florida passed HB 9B, which formally superseded the Disney-dominated Reedy Creek Improvement District with the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. The practical effect was to replace the old board’s five Disney-controlled members with the new board’s five DeSantis-appointed members. The new board went into effect on Feb. 27.
So far, so good.
But, as it turns out, the outgoing Reedy Creek Improvement District board, in the final lead-up to HB 9B’s passage into law, purported to enter into a binding development agreement with Disney. The purported contract would explicitly give full control over zoning, building development rights, and other areas to Disney for another 30 years — thus going even further than the already favorable treatment Disney enjoyed under the Reedy Creek Improvement District, and stripping the new Central Florida Tourism Oversight District of any meaningful regulatory teeth.
