Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday he has expanded the Legislature’s special session on redistricting this week to cut to the core of his latest political enemy and announced he wants lawmakers to repeal the law that allows the Walt Disney World Resort to operate as a self-governing body.
“I am announcing today that we are expanding the call of what they are going to be considering this week,” DeSantis said at a news conference in The Villages. “Yes, they will be considering the congressional map, but they also will be considering termination of all special districts that were enacted in Florida prior to 1968 — and that includes the Reedy Creek Improvement District.”
The Reedy Creek Improvement District is the special taxing district and governing body for the Walt Disney World Resort. It was created by state lawmakers in 1967 and comprises 39 square miles, two cities and land in Orange and Osceola counties. It allows the company to act with the same authority and responsibility as a county government.
Disney can control its own zoning. It has its own police and fire departments, and it operates independently of all the other rules imposed on counties in the state. Repealing the special taxing district status would require the state to put in place a replacement structure. The governor did not elaborate on what he would like to see.
The attack on Disney came after the company announced it would withhold political campaign contributions in Florida after legislators passed the Parental Rights in Education bill, also known as the “don’t say gay” law. The company attempted to work behind the scenes to weaken the measure, which prohibits instruction related to gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade, and requires such conversations to be “age-appropriate” in successive grades. The law does not define “age-appropriate.”
After the bill was passed, The Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Chapek apologized to employees at the company for the company’s handling of its position on the bill and said that it would be pausing political donations in the state.
“For Disney to come out and put a statement and say that the bill should have never passed and that they are going to actively work to repeal it, I think, one, was fundamentally dishonest but, two, I think that crossed the line,” DeSantis said after Chapek’s comments.
House Speaker Chris Sprowls defended the repeal of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, saying the House has long contemplated the move because of the many taxing districts in Florida. He accused Disney of “harnessing” its ideology “to control everything that happens in society. That is wildly inappropriate. ... How long are you special?”
“What Disney did is sort of unprecedented,” he said. He said the state is used to corporations using their power, but “what’s most troubling about Disney is not they had a disagreement with what we did with policy. A lot of people have a disagreement on policy. They used their platform to perpetuate what we believe to be a lie — that the bill did one thing it didn’t really do at all.”
In the 2021 legislative session, DeSantis’ staff worked to help Disney receive a special carveout in a bill that aimed to crack down on “Big Tech” social media companies the governor said was banning the accounts of too many conservatives.
The bill was a DeSantis priority but has since been blocked in court. The judge cited that the last-minute amendment exempting companies that own theme parks, a move the House sponsor acknowledged was done so that reviews left on Disney+ wouldn’t fall under the law.
The state is appealing the ruling and a hearing is scheduled for April 28.
But, in the proclamation adding special districts to this week’s special session agenda, the governor indicated that he wants the statute amended, perhaps in an effort to remove the carveout.
The bill allowed Floridians to use Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act to sue big tech companies if they’re censored or removed from a social media platform. Draft legislation filed Tuesday would give the state one year to dissolve the special districts that were created before November 1968 and have not been reapproved in state law. (A state Constitution was ratified in November 1968.)
A House staff analysis said the legislation would apply to five special districts: the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the Bradford County Development Authority, the Sunshine Water Control District in Broward County, the Eastpoint Water and Sewer District in Franklin County and the Hamilton County Development Authority.
Until the repeal of the districts takes effect, however, legislators can promise Disney that they could return next year and reverse the repeal of Reedy Creek and perhaps encourage Disney to rescind its pledge not to contribute to Florida’s political campaigns.
DeSantis on Tuesday said he expects the state’s appeal of the data privacy law to prevail in court. He said one reason the state pursued the bill was because the social media platforms could adopt policies that “ban candidates for office” while allowing other candidates to remain on the platform.
“That’s got to be like an in-kind contribution or something,” DeSantis said. “They advertise as being open platforms. They advertise as you being able to express yourself and communicate with other people. And yet, their censorship decisions and de-platforming decisions are based on viewpoint discrimination.”
DeSantis’ war with Disney, however, started after that bill passed and during the COVID fight, when the company required all its on-site employees to be fully vaccinated by late October, and the governor announced he would impose fines on the company but the company then ended its requirement that all employees be vaccinated and was never fined.
At the news conference, DeSantis thanked Sprowls and Senate President Wilton Simpson for “stepping up and making sure that we make the sunset or the termination on those special districts happen, which I think is very important.”
Sprowls said he expects the added assignment will mean legislators will adjourn on Thursday.
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