Disney's special Florida tax district struck down on behalf of Big Homophobia
There are probably good reasons Disney shouldn't have autonomous control of a chunk of Florida real estate; "acknowledging gay people exist" isn't one of them
Florida state governor Ron DeSantis has now officially put a whole fucking lot of people’s money where his homophobic mouth is, signing into law today a bill that strips the Disney corporation of control over a special district near Disney World that the company has been in charge of since 1967.
We’ll get into why this sucks, both philosophically and fiscally, in a second. But first: Whooooo wants a sidebar about why Disney has its own autonomous patch of Florida land in the first place?
Welcome, readers, to the Reedy Creek Improvement District sidebar! So: The Disney company owns the land in question (about 40 square miles around the Florida park) because Walt Disney bought it up on the cheap through a bunch of shell companies when he was planning for Disney World in the 1960s—because a), he didn’t like all the businesses that had popped up somewhat parasitically around Disneyland in California, and b), he had some notoriously weird ideas about community planning. Disney then petitioned Florida for an arrangement where the Disney company would assume control of the district; they pay property taxes (and then some) to the state, and in exchange they’re basically exempt from a bunch of land use laws, acting as the de facto county government for this fairly hefty patch of land. That’s weird enough, but it probably would have gotten a lot weirder had Walt survived to see its founding; as is, the planned residential community (hypothetically meant to operate under Disney’s EPCOT plan) never got built (because no one at Disney other than Walt actually wanted to run a city), and only about 50 people total live in the entire district. This concludes the sidebar!
Anyway! All that’s to say that there might be some legitimately good reasons for Disney to not serve as an acting government for a small chunk of Florida real estate. But none of those reasons were why DeSantis struck down the law establishing the district earlier today. No, that was good ol’ fashioned homophobia.
That’s not even subtext, by the way; DeSantis literally said he was retaliating today because Disney was “injecting sexuality into the programming that is provided to our youngest kids,” i.e., acknowledging that gay people, like the families of many of those youngest kids, actually exist. It’s all wrapped up in DeSantis’ beloved “don’t say gay” bill, which Disney leadership was eventually pushed into more actively opposing by critics both inside and outside the company. Now, we’ve got DeSantis grandstanding in reprisal with a statement that “I’m just not comfortable having that type of agenda get special treatment in my state.”
Which is just dumb as shit ethically, obviously. But it might also be dumb as shit fiscally; there have been reports that the dissolution of the special district may mean Disney will end up paying fewer taxes than it currently is, with the burden of those tax debts (and maintenance for the public services Disney maintained in the area) being shifted on to the property taxes of the surrounding counties. DeSantis claims that that won’t happen, but he also claims that Disney is trying to brainwash your kids by teaching them about the existence of same-sex families, so feel try to re-visit our previous judgement re: him being just dumb as shit.