Phelan M. Ebenhack via AP
Disney World and related Disney-owned complexes span two counties, Orange and Osceola, which will now have to provide public services.
Gov. Ron DeSantis rammed through the Florida legislature a law abolishing Disney’s special taxing and self-governing district, called the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Thanks to that special district, Disney is a law unto itself within its 25,000-acre theme park complex. It can levy taxes to pay for fire, police, and medical services, issue bonds, plan highways, power stations, or bus services—all without approval from local government, bypassing the usual planning and permitting process.
It is a matter of some dispute whether eliminating Disney’s private government would cost local taxpayers money or perhaps force Disney to pay more. Disney World and related Disney-owned complexes span two counties, Orange and Osceola, which will now have to provide public services. But localities might levy more taxes from Disney than under current arrangements.
DeSantis has referred to Disney’s special arrangements as a “sweetheart deal.” He is not wrong. Disney World was born corrupt. According a review of public records by the Orlando Sentinel, Disney began covertly assembling parcels in what was then mostly swampland, through a series of shell companies.
According to the Sentinel, “Most of the land transactions were handled in cash to eliminate a paper trail. The first purchases, recorded on May 3, 1965, included one for 8,380 acres of swamp and brush from state Sen. Ira Bronson at a price of $107 an acre.” After Disney made its plans known, the company then negotiated its special-district status with state officials.
Deals like Disney’s privatize public functions. As Donald Cohen, co-author of the recent book The Privatization of Everything, tells me, “The Disney special taxing district is just one of hundreds of similar districts across Florida. The DeSantis culture war might actually help to expose the proliferation of privatized government in special districts that hand over the basic democratic functions of government to companies and private groups.”
These deals are by no means necessary to get developments done. In Anaheim, California, the original Disneyland has no special district. When Disney wants something that requires government approval, it has to ask the local government like any other citizen.
Whatever you think of Disney’s deal, official retaliation against Disney’s exercise of free speech is unconstitutional, according to the Supreme Court. The Court held in Hartman v. Moore (2006) that “Official reprisal for protected speech ‘offends the Constitution [because] it threatens to inhibit exercise of the protected right.’” If anything, that finding is even stronger today, with the courts having given corporations more rights as “persons.”
It would be comforting to think that DeSantis’s culture war with Disney will trigger an overdue review of private-government deals. But dream on. Once DeSantis and his party have made an object lesson of Disney for resisting their assault on LGBTQ people, the Republicans will be right back where they always are—in the pocket of corporate America.
