Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced a bill that will revoke the agreement Disney made with the former Reedy Creek Improvement District board to undercut the state’s takeover of the special district encompassing the Walt Disney World Resort.
DeSantis said the board should be able to use one of the “plethora of legal infirmities” in the agreement to void it but also said the legislature will get involved as “a strong one, two punch” while speaking at a press conference in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
DESANTIS-APPOINTED DISNEY BOARD HITS BACK IN FIGHT FOR AUTHORITY OF CITIES IN DISTRICT
“The agreements themselves have a plethora of legal infirmities that render them void anyways. And I think that the board, our state board that meets again on Wednesday, I think that they will find as such, and I fully expect them to take the board out of those agreements,” DeSantis said.
“However, even if that weren’t the case, chapter 163 section 3241 of Florida statute provides the legislature with the authority to revoke development agreements in this exact type of instance, and so I’ve worked with both leaders of the House and Senate. There is a bill that will be put out in the Florida legislature that will make sure that the agreements purported to be entered in by Disney are revoked and the people’s will is established and is upheld,” DeSantis added.
DeSantis said the state has discovered various parts of the agreement that were not handled properly that would invalidate the agreement on its own, including a breach of the proper notice period for the “sham agreement.” DeSantis said he “highly anticipates” the board’s action will be enough but that the legislature’s action will act as a backstop.
The Florida governor also teased taking action to subject the resort’s monorail system and attractions to state inspection, saying it would put Disney in line with other amusement parks in the Sunshine State.
“They exempted the monorail from any safety standards or inspections, so they’re gonna go and make sure that the monorail is subject to oversight, just like everything else would be in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis also discussed how the lands the district owns would be analyzed by the state to see how to use it best, joking that the state could build a new prison on the land.
“People are like, ‘What should we do with this land?’ And so people have said, maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks, and someone even said maybe need another state prison, who knows? I mean, I just think that the possibilities are endless, and so that is now going to be analyzed to see what would make the most sense, and that wasn’t necessarily even on the radar,” DeSantis said.
Republican state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia issued a warning for Disney, saying it will not win the “fight” against DeSantis.
“I know this governor well, so I have a couple of words for Disney. You are not going to win this fight. This governor will. And one word of advice to Disney corporation going forward, just let it go. Let it go. That’s it,” Ingoglia said.
DeSantis and the board are reeling from the discovery of an agreement between the previous Disney-appointed board and the company that stripped the new board of its power for the foreseeable future.
The agreement, which was signed on Feb. 8, does not permit the board to make most changes without permission from the Walt Disney Company. The “King Charles clause” in the agreement ensures Disney has autonomy over the district, which includes the Walt Disney World Resort, until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, King of England, living as of the date of this declaration.”
The Florida governor ordered an investigation into the Disney-appointed board of the then-named Reedy Creek Improvement District after the agreement surfaced.
DeSantis’s office also said the agreement is likely invalid and that all options remain on the table, including legislative action. The new board announced last month it had hired four outside law firms to work to void the agreement made under the previous board.
“All agreements signed between Disney and the District were appropriate, and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law,” Disney said in a statement to the Washington Examiner after the DeSantis-appointed board discovered the February agreement.
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The Florida governor recently vowed to investigate Disney’s taxes on its hotels and impose tolls on the roads that serve Disney’s theme parks.
The battle between DeSantis and the company, which led to Disney’s central Florida district being restructured, stemmed from Disney denouncing DeSantis’s push for the Parental Rights in Education Act last year. Disney had maintained full autonomy over the district since its creation in 1967.
