Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says the state will likely take control of Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District

May 16, 2022 in "The Walt Disney Company"

Posted: Monday May 16, 2022 1:04pm ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

At an event in Sanford this morning, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that the state would likely take control of Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District.

Since the Governor signed the bill dissolving Reedy Creek Improvement District last month, many questions have been raised about how dissolving the district will be achieved in practice and if any debt will be passed onto the local Orange and Osceola counties.

He said today, "The path forward is, Disney will not control its own government in the state of Florida. Disney will have to follow the same laws that every other company has to follow in the state of Florida. They will pay their share of taxes, and they will be responsible for paying the debts."

Despite his comments this morning, DeSantis has still not laid out a clear plan to dissolve Reedy Creek. He said today that his plan would be presented to the legislature after the November 2022 elections, which leaves very little time before the June 1 2023 termination date.

The creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District in 1967 allowed Disney the luxury of establishing its own independent government that handles many aspects of the Walt Disney World property, including emergency services, infrastructure, and construction permitting.

These latest developments follow escalating tensions between DeSantis and Disney CEO Bob Chapek regarding Disney's opposition to Florida's HB 1557, also known as the 'Don't Say Gay' bill.

Disney's Bob Chapek has yet to make any public comments on the situation regarding Reedy Creek Improvement District.

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JoeCamel6 days ago

Welllllll....

JKick956 days ago

Do we have any updates on what this plan entails?

MR.Dis20 days ago

To give an example, I am retired from JP Morgan Chase, the provider of Disney Visa charge cards. I was eligible to purchase WDW and Disneyland tickets thru a portal for 20% off the rack rate. I do not know if that is still the case. While I was an annual pass holder purchasing thru DVC, I would purchase tickets for my kids when they visited WDW with their families. It was a significant savings.

flyakite20 days ago

Should anyone be interested and would like to attend:

michmousefanDec 29, 2024

cranbizDec 28, 2024

Not really a distortion of facts. Yes, RCID was a legally a separate entity from TWDC. In reality, it was controlled by WDW, which is why DeSantis had a hard on for getting revenge on TWDC for "don't say gay" and other woke policies by trying to revoke the district. He couldn't do that for many reasons so he got the law changed to appoint his own governing board. As we know, that really did fail miserably and there is now a board that is not antagonistic towards Disney. There is a charge for those benefits to the third party entities in some way, shape or form. WDW doesn't give anything away for free. RCID (and many third party operating participants) pay for those benefits (usually at a very reduced rate). So, in the case of RCID, Disney paid for those benefits through it's tax assessments because RCID has no income of it's own except for income received from it's taxpayers (of which TWDC is it's largest and majority taxpayer). So, what I said was true. WDW paid for the benefits granted by RCID to it's employees and RCID, by granting those benefits paid WDW back for them. This keeps everything legal. Yes, CFTOD wanted to stick it to Disney by refusing to pay WDW for those benefits, which in turn stuck it to the employees. RCID and CFTOD employees were never WDW Cast Members, they were employees of RCID or are/were employees of CFTOD.

LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

It takes little time to release a completed report. Unless that report didn't say exactly what you wanted it to say....

LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

Governor's office receives a FOIA (govt in the Sunshine) request... "What's sunshine?" 🙄

LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

🤫

LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

Florida statute says state records are open to the public. It doesn't say how quickly agencies have to provide the info. When I worked for various state agencies, we tried getting the requested info as quickly as possible. If it was a state legislator or governor's office, yesterday wasn't fast enough. 😉

LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

Bingo

Chi84Dec 28, 2024

So they had to ferret it out as opposed to the government releasing it to the news agencies. That’s understandable. Those requests can take a surprisingly long time to fulfill.

StripesDec 28, 2024

WKMG submitted a public records request. That request was just recently fulfilled and the document released. WKMG hasn’t said when they submitted the request.

UnbansheeDec 28, 2024

Lol, you must be new here. The state doesn't like to "live in the sunshine" when it comes to matters that the esteemed governor finds personally difficult