Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis consigned Disney World’s self-governing status to the historical dustbin on Feb. 27 as he signed a bill setting up a new board to govern the central Florida property, one of the world’s premier tourist destinations.
DeSantis staged the bill with a backdrop not of the Magic Kingdom, but of a big yellow fire truck at Reedy Creek Fire Station No. 4. “Reedy Creek” was the name of Disney’s self-governing district, which had governmental powers unlike those granted to any other business in the state.
“Today is the day the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” DeSantis said.
The new legislation means Disney will no longer have governmental powers, including the right to tax, to avoid state building and fire codes, to avoid state regulatory reviews and approvals, to issue tax-exempt bonds, and to operate its own utility and emergency services within its 25,000 acres that straddle Orange and Osceola counties.
The measure, which will take effect in June, renames the Reedy Creek Improvement District to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. Its five supervisors will be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Florida Senate.
The new district will continue the old district’s functions but under a new organizational structure, and it will remain exempt from property taxes, a detail that has irked some.
DeSantis and other speakers who joined him at the podium reviewed a wide range of issues tied into the tussle with the big entertainment company. The move to end the company’s self-governing status was triggered last spring when Disney executives came out against DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education Act—which opponents have labeled the “Don’t Say Gay” bill—which combats rising wokeness in public schools and the taking of sexuality education out of parents’ hands.
Jon Shirey, president of the Reedy Creek Professional Firefighters union, accused the company of having sacrificed public safety, obscuring how shorthanded and underfunded first responders like firefighters and paramedics were and how few of their vehicles were ready to go on any given day—despite a $30 million surplus in Reedy Creek’s budget.
Nick Catarano, a long-time, second-generation Disney employee, outlined the company’s firing and harassment of employees like himself who didn’t want to get COVID-19 vaccines or wear masks. He also spoke of his dismay at the shift in Disney’s once family-friendly content, one that made him proud, to one many families object to.
“Disney has since doubled down and embraced all things woke, increasingly making things like sex, gender, race, and worse ... the core mission of its storytelling. You know, [they’ve] gone from ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Snow White’ and ‘Pocahontas’—all these great stories with morals and great characters—and have brought us stuff like ’Little Demon,' who was the spawn of Satan, as the lead character,” Catarano said.
“We have recently seen the cartoon ‘Proud Family’ on Disney Plus. And that really doesn’t tell the whole truth of what happened in our country. They tried to build a narrative that everything in this country is built on the back of slaves and reparations. And what they’re doing is they’re taking vulnerable children and indoctrinating them into becoming activists and hating each other.”
Mandy Shafer, a mother who grew up in the area, said Disney World was interwoven into every aspect of her own youth and now that of her children.
But her family started breaking their ties with Disney, deciding to give up their annual passes, in 2020 when they couldn’t tolerate the park’s masking rules.
“That was the first step in our divorce from Disney,” she said. “Through the years, it was always wholesome entertainment for the entire family. ... I felt safe exposing my children to Disney’s content without fear of evil programming.
“Then something happened. We became aware that Disney’s content was changing by including and promoting more and more immorality.
“I simply don’t want Disney, which I once trusted, to teach my child or any children to be comfortable with or participate in immorality.”
The company’s opposition to the parental rights law, she said, meant “they chose the wrong side of the moral argument, and that was the icing on the cake for our family.”
This new bill concludes a journey that began on March 7, 2022, when DeSantis signed the parental rights bill.
That measure, which bans the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, was tagged the “Don’t Say Gay” law by opponents.
Activists quickly ramped up claims the law was harmful to LGBT children and children with LGBT loved ones. Disney initially steered a center course between LGBT activists demanding the company condemn the law and conservative employees who urged the company to remain neutral on political issues.
Later, Disney CEO Bob Chapek said company leaders had opposed the bill “from the outset.”
“We chose not to take a public position on it, because we thought we could be more effective working behind-the-scenes, engaging directly with lawmakers,” he said during the company’s annual shareholders meeting.
Peter Rice, chairman of Disney General Entertainment Content, called the law “a new and painful iteration of a history of discrimination against an already vulnerable group” and “a violation of fundamental human rights.”
Disney called for the law’s repeal.
Responding to Disney’s amplified condemnation, DeSantis said he'd seek to end the special privileges enjoyed by the entertainment company.
“You’re a corporation based in Burbank, California, and you’re going to marshal your economic might to attack the parents of my state?” DeSantis said during an event at a local school in April 2022. “We view that as a provocation, and we’re going to fight back against that.”
Secret Land Acquisitions
Disney had long enjoyed a unique status for a business.Brothers Walt and Roy Disney began their secret land acquisitions in the early 1960s, using fictional front companies to buy land.
The project was made public in 1965, and the Reedy Creek district was formed in 1967.
Walt Disney World opened on Oct. 1, 1971, bearing the name of its founder, who died before its completion.
Disney World put Orlando on the map.
It transformed the sleepy town of about 200,000 in 1960 into a major metropolis of more than 2 million today. It has the ninth-busiest airport in the country and has become a theme-park mecca for travelers from around the globe.
Political Win
DeSantis accomplished several things politically with the move to rein in Disney, said Susan MacManus, political science professor emeritus at the University of South Florida in Tampa.He showed strength to a powerful organization that had publicly opposed him, the Republicans, and parents with children in public schools, MacManus indicated in an email to The Epoch Times.
While Republicans have historically been criticized for being too cozy with Big Business, this was the opposite and put Democrats in the position of defending Disney.
Other business owners who don’t enjoy the same privileges Disney has had are likely to appreciate the move.
And it hasn’t hurt tourism, MacManus said. Disney has announced corporate layoffs, but she pointed out that those are at other locations.
Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, told The Epoch Times in an email that DeSantis views this as a win.
“I believe that it will help him with his [presumed] goal of attracting more potential Republican voters in a presidential primary, raising more money, and solidifying his image as a conservative fighter,” Jewett wrote.
But DeSantis faces criticism from within his own party, Jewett noted. Some Republicans don’t think he followed through on his promise to remove special privileges, such as the exemption from property taxes.
And “some business folks [and libertarians] are also leery that the governor punished a company for simply exercising their First Amendment rights,” Jewett wrote.
“I think some business groups and other interests that tend to donate to campaigns also wonder about Governor DeSantis’s loyalty, since Disney has been a longtime supporter of Republicans in Florida [including DeSantis] with millions of dollars in direct contributions and in-kind contributions [like theme park tickets and meeting space] and yet because of one policy disagreement they were threatened, publicly castigated, and then punished,” he wrote.
“Of course, the desire to be in good graces with Governor DeSantis will probably keep the money flowing, but I think many of those groups will at least have a little bit of a worry in the back of their mind.”
And, he added, Democrats may use the move—putting the new board under the governor’s control, rather than sharing power with local government—to suggest it “as one more piece of evidence that the governor has an authoritarian streak.”
