The Florida Governor is speaking out against Disney’s recent lawsuit filed which claims that the Sunshine State is unfairly targeting Disney over free speech.
We’ve covered this accurately for about a year now. We’re continuing to cover the saga in Florida which is now reaching its probable end, although Disney is hoping that will last long enough that Ron DeSantis won’t be around to see it. The company is now claiming that the dissolution of Reedy Creek Improvement District, a special district controlled by two “cities” and which controls much of The Walt Disney World Resort, is a retaliatory move meant to stifle the company’s free and political speech.
There’s just one problem. Reedy Creek isn’t supposed to be synonymous with Disney World… at all.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slammed The Walt Disney Co.’s lawsuit over his effort to strip the company of authority over its sprawling Walt Disney World property.
DeSantis called the litigation without “merit” and “political,” while defending his moves against the Mouse House as merely putting the company on an equal playing field with other theme parks and resorts.
“Giving a company its own government, that is not what a free market is all about,” DeSantis said during a visit to Jerusalem. “In fact, they’ve been treated much different than Universal, Sea World and all these other places. And so they’re upset because they’re actually having to live by the same rules as everybody else. They don’t want to have to pay the same taxes as everybody else, and they want to be able to control things without proper oversight.”
— Ted Johnson, Deadline
The Reedy Creek Improvement District was a special governmental district encompassing an area of approximately 38 square miles prior to its dissolution earlier this month. Established in 1967, it was specifically created by the Florida State Legislature to facilitate the development and operation of Walt Disney World.
Walt Disney World itself is a massive entertainment complex that was opened to the public in 1971, and it is owned and operated by a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. However, the Reedy Creek Improvement District plays a crucial role in the management of the area, overseeing many of the essential services that make the resort function. The district had its own government, which was run by a board of supervisors. These supervisors are appointed by landowners within “cities” that are located in the area of Walt Disney World. Now, however, in stark contrast to the system that gave Disney essentially total power over a government with an area the size of Manhattan, the governor of Florida now assigns board members to the new district. The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District continues to have the power to levy taxes, issue bonds, and make decisions related to the management of the district. This level of autonomy is highly unusual for a government entity of this size, and it previously had given Disney a great deal of control over the area. That meant Disney had a large competitive advantage granted by the government over other businesses.
Now, with the company seeking to ostensibly claim that it is being targeted when Reedy Creek is targeted, the implication may be that Disney was one-and-the-same as the government. That would open the company up to huge issues related to the running of two “fake” cities in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista. Those were supposed to be real cities with real working governments… instead they are two single road mobile home parks that Disney fully controls in order to maintain government powers without having actual citizens controlling the governments.
Why Disney would attempt such a maneuver and argue in court for being one-and-the-same is truly odd. Perhaps if they are allowed to do so, they may one day wish they had been told they were lacking standing.
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Of course Disney’s lawsuit against the wonderful Gov. Desantis has no merit. Unfortunately that won’t stop the fools from other Disney websites and Disney Adults from bellowing otherwise. There is that one particular cretin from a particular site that foolishly believes that this lawsuit is Disney’s “checkmate” over DeSantis. Not only was his article poorly written as usual, but it put on full display a lack of being MENSA material and could use a few large doses of fish oil.