Disney’s Florida Fiasco: The Pitfalls of ‘Woke Capitalism’
Commentary
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is moving forward with his plan to remove the special legal status that has allowed Walt Disney World to operate for more than 50 years as an autonomous government entity, free of nearly all state and local oversight and with the power to levy its own tax-free municipal bonds.
A Jan. 6 announcement on the website of Florida’s Osceola County, where part of Disney’s resort empire is located, stated that a bill pending in the Florida legislature would transfer to a state-controlled board the governance of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the Disney-controlled public entity that has run Disney World since it opened its gates as a theme park in 1971. The bill follows the Florida legislature’s overwhelming approval in April 2022 of a measure that is set to dissolve, as of June 1 of this year, the self-governing arrangement complete with tax breaks the legislature had created for Disney in 1967 as an incentive for Disney to choose central Florida for its East Coast operations….