Stick with it Stage in a fire station In Lake Buena Vista, Florida, home of Walt Disney World, Governor Ron DeSantis this week declared victory in his ongoing battle against Disney. “Today, the corporate empire is coming to an end,” he said.
By “corporate kingdom,” DeSantis was referring to the sprawling theme park’s longstanding system of self-government, an arrangement established more than 50 years ago that helped land the entertainment giant in Florida and make it the Sunshine State’s largest private employer. to make.
Under legislation signed by DeSantis Monday, the state of Florida took control of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which essentially functions as Disney’s private city government in the area where Walt Disney World and other parks were located. The move is widely seen as retaliation against Disney after the company under internal pressure denounced a Florida education law known to critics as “Don’t Say Gay” for restricting classroom teaching on gender identity and sexual orientation in preschool up to third grade. Rank.
The district formerly known as Reedy Creek now has a new name and a council whose members are elected by DeSantis. Under the previous system, the Reedy Creek board was essentially chosen by Disney.
For DeSantis, who uses the entertainment company Burbank as a foil for cultural issues, the move is a PR coup among conservatives as politicians widely expect him to run for president in 2024. It came just as DeSantis was preparing to publish his book, The Courage to Be Free.
But what did Disney actually lose by fighting DeSantis?
While the new law brings a number of significant changes, the main one is the repeal of a previous mandate that would have led to it total dissolution of the district. That earlier bill, which DeSantis and state lawmakers sprinted across the finish line last spring, would have left taxpayers in Orange and Osceola counties, the two counties that span Disney lands, with a debt to the county.
“That was something that a lot of people were concerned about,” said Jacob Schumer, an attorney specializing in Florida’s local government and tax laws who has written about the mortgage debt. “Nothing will change. The disaster that will hit the country and taxpayers here outside of Disney won’t hit them.”
Disney and DeSantis officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But the law changes who controls the government overseeing Disney’s kingdom in the state, which could herald impending strife as tensions between the company, which is increasingly committed to progressive social issues, and the conservative state, which a crusade, weight gain. against what it calls “awakened ideology”.
The new member list, Who DeSantis named Monday was Bridget Ziegler, a conservative education activist and co-founder of the right-wing group Moms for Liberty; Ron Peri, president of Gathering USA, a Christian ministry; and three lawyers, including the president of the Orlando Chapter of the Federalist Society.
“He appointed culture warriors, Christian national types. That’s no exaggeration,” said Richard Foglesong, political scientist and author of Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando.
In recent years, Disney has revamped its products and theme parks, drawing the ire of conservatives. Visitors to the Magic Kingdom fireworks show are now greeted with a gender-neutral greeting, a departure from previous greetings that were addressed to “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.” The company has also revamped older attractions that were criticized for being insensitive, including the Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean, and is turning Splash Mountain into a new Princess and the Frog-themed attraction after years of complaints about racism in Song of the South, the 1946 movie that inspired the ride.
The appointments — which Foglesong likened to appointments to airport authorities or a public works authority — do not control Disney’s products. But they could leverage their position in Florida’s ongoing culture war with Disney in future applications from the company for roads, new projects or other ventures.
“It seems like a combustible mix to have people who are censors work as supervisors for an affiliate of the Walt Disney Company,” Foglesong said.
The law also changed the name of the special district from the Reedy Creek Improvement District to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. In addition, the bill removed some other peripheral privileges, such as prohibiting Disney from building a nuclear power plant or an airport at the resort, which the company would likely never use.
“I find [Disney is] now more threatened than I thought,” Foglesong said, pointing to the appointment list. The New College of Florida at Sarasotawhere DeSantis embarks on a mission to transform the small, progressive school into a model of conservatism is a cautionary tale, he added.
But other than that, it’s largely business as usual, at least for now, experts say. Many of the key privileges that made Reedy Creek unique remain intact, including the ability to issue bonds. “Those are the special things about what Reedy Creek did,” Schumer said.
Reedy Creek was born in part from the lessons learned by brothers Walt and Roy Disney who operated Disneyland in Anaheim, which opened in 1955. Their ambitions were hampered by government bureaucracy, which worked with the city on public facilities and zoning plans. As the brothers tried to expand Disney’s footprint — only 10% of people coming to Disneyland in California were from eastern Mississippi — they wanted their own self-regulation system. The company eventually settled in Florida worked with legislators to create the Reedy Creek Improvement District in 1967. The theme park opened a few years later in 1971.
Spanning approximately 40 square miles in Orange and Osceola counties, the district provides everything from fire protection and emergency services to water systems, flood management and power generation. Its boundaries include four theme parks, two water parks, a sports complex, 175 miles of roads, the towns of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, supply centers, more than 40,000 hotel rooms, and hundreds of restaurants and shops. website. .
What lies ahead for Disney remains to be seen. DeSantis asked the board to propose further agency changes and waivers within a year and again in five years, Foglesong noted.
“Maybe down the road [DeSantis] will be able to take another bite of the apple and take powers and waivers that the Disney company still has,” Foglesong said.
Times writer Ryan Faughnder and associated press contributed to this report.
Source: LA Times