Orlando, Florida. – The idea was presented to Florida lawmakers at a movie theater outside Orlando 55 years ago, with Walt Disney, who had died less than two months earlier, helping to pave the way: Let Disney form its own government in replacing it will create a futuristic city of tomorrow.
The city never materialized, but Walt Disney World became an economic giant with four theme parks and two dozen hotels, while its government retained unprecedented powers to decide what and how to build by issuing bonds and having the ability to build its own nuclear power plant. if wanted.
Now, five decades later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is urging lawmakers to end the Disney government in a move that threatens the symbiotic relationship between the state and the company. A high-profile attack by a historically GOP politician who has historically defended his business ties follows the company’s opposition to what critics have called the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans instructions on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten until third grade.
Republican MP Randy Fine, sponsor of the bill to remove the area to improve Reedy Creek, as Disney’s government structure is known, said it was time for a change.
“You’re digging up the hornet’s nest, things are coming up. And I’ll say this: You have me in one thing – this bill is aimed at one company. It’s aimed at Walt Disney Co.,” Fine said. “You want to know why? Because they are the only company in the state that has ever been granted the right to govern itself.”
In a presentation on fundraising by email on Wednesday, DeSantis, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2024, put it this way:
“Disney got away with special deals from Florida for too long. We had to look under the hood to see what Disney has become, to really understand their inappropriate influence, “the governor’s email said.
“If Disney wants to choose a battle, they have chosen the wrong person,” the email added.
Disney, based in Burbank, California, had more than $ 67 billion in revenue in 2021 and declined to comment on Florida legislation passed by the U.S. Senate on Wednesday and being considered by the House of Representatives at a special session of Republican-dominated legislature. The date of entry into force of the measure will be June 2023, leaving time to develop a compromise, except for the complete abolition of the area.
Before Reedy Creek became the Disney government, it was a drainage area created to help manage 27,000 acres (10,926 acres) that the company secretly acquired plot by plot in the mid-1960s.
Initially, news accounts speculated that a “new and large industrial complex” could be coming to the area. Some reports link him to the Kennedy Space Center about an hour’s drive from Cape Canaveral. Finally, on October 21, 1965, Orlando Sentinel released a story with the following title: “We say, ‘The Mysterious Industry’ is Disney.”
A few days later, the then governor. Hayden Burns confirmed Disney’s plan, saying it would be “the biggest attraction in Florida history.”
This will prove true over the decades, as the Orlando subway became the most visited destination in the United States, attracting 75 million tourists a year before the pandemic. The subway area, which added Universal and SeaWorld theme parks, grew from 305,000 in 1970, the year before Disney World opened, to nearly 2.7 million last year.
Somehow, the Reedy Creek improvement area was built on misconceptions when company officials came to Florida MPs with plans to build Disneyland on the East Coast. After the company’s first theme park in Southern California was built in the 1950s, motels and tourist shops invaded the property, and Walt Disney wanted to make sure the same thing didn’t happen in Florida.
Along with the theme park, Disney staff led by Roy Disney, Walt’s brother, told Florida lawmakers in 1967 that they planned to build a futuristic city – the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, also known as Epcot.
The proposed city will include a fast transit system and innovation in urban planning, so Disney needs autonomy in the area to build and decide how to use the land, they said. The futuristic city never materialized, and instead Epcot became the second theme park to open in 1982.
“They said they were going to do one thing, but they did another,” said Richard Foglesong, a retired political scientist from Rollins College whose book “Married to the Mouse” tells the story of Reedy Creek. “He was legally unfounded in that regard. I think that’s a factual argument.”
Reedy Creek was allowed to build its own roads, run its own wastewater treatment plants, run its own fire department, set its own building codes, and inspect Disney’s buildings for safety. In the current fiscal year, the district has $ 169 million in revenue and $ 178 million in expenditure.
Reedy Creek essentially runs a middle town. Every day, up to 350,000 people are owned by Disney World as theme park visitors, overnight hotel guests or employees. The district must manage traffic, dispose of waste and control mosquito abundance in an area once called Mosquito County.
Although Reedy Creek’s primary mission is to run Disney World, it is home to less than 50 residents living in industrial homes in two small communities, Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista. The two municipalities were formed in support of the area’s legal framework for improving Reedy Creek, which is governed by a five-member board of supervisors with a four-year term. Supervisors must own land in Reedy Creek, and to qualify, Disney gives them a small piece of land that they must return after leaving the board.
This is not the only thing Disney has distributed over the decades.
Disney is a major political player in Florida and the country. The Responsive Policy Center, which tracks the costs of a political campaign, announced that in the 2020 campaign cycle, Walt Disney Co. and its affiliates have made more than $ 20 million in political contributions to both Republicans and Democrats.
That same year, the most recent, for which figures are available, related to Disney entities directed $ 10.5 million to the Committee on American Action, which supports former President Donald Trump. Disney also contributed $ 1.2 million to support President Joe Biden’s campaign.
“I think Disney is a little stuck,” Foglesong said. “They had tried to play it both ways, contributing to what you can only call right-wing Republicans. They thought they could have it both ways – to be the company of motherhood and apple pie and to finance these reactionary Republican politicians. “
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