DeSantis announces plans to revoke Disney agreement that undermined state district
Jack Birle
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced a bill that he says will revoke the agreement Disney had made with the former Reedy Creek Improvement District board to undercut the the state’s takeover of the special district encompassing the Walt Disney World Resort.
DeSantis also teased action to subject the resort’s monorail system to state inspection, while speaking at a press conference in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
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“The agreements themselves have a plethora of legal infirmities that render them void any ways, and I think that the board, our state board that meets again on Wednesday. I think that they will find as such, and I fully expect them to take the board out of those agreements,” DeSantis said.
“However, even if that weren’t the case chapter 163 section 3241 of Florida statutes provides the legislature with the authority to revoke development agreements in this exact type of instance, and so I’ve worked with both leaders of the House and Senate. There is a bill that will be put out in the Florida legislature that will make sure that the agreements purported to be entered in by Disney are revoked and the people’s will is established and is upheld,” DeSantis added.
DeSantis and the board are still reeling from the discovery of an agreement between the previous Disney-appointed board and the company that stripped the new board of its power for the foreseeable future.
The agreement, which was signed on Feb. 8, does not permit the board to make most changes without permission from the Walt Disney Company. The “King Charles clause” in the agreement ensures Disney has autonomy over the district, which includes the Walt Disney World Resort, until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, King of England, living as of the date of this declaration.”
The Florida governor ordered an investigation into the Disney-appointed board of the then-named Reedy Creek Improvement District after the agreement surfaced.
DeSantis’s office has also said the agreement is likely invalid and that all options remain on the table, including legislative action. The new board announced last month that it had hired four outside law firms to work to void the agreement made under the previous board.
“All agreements signed between Disney and the District were appropriate, and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law,” Disney said in a statement to the Washington Examiner after the DeSantis-appointed board discovered the February agreement.
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The Florida governor has recently vowed to investigate Disney’s taxes on their hotels and impose tolls on the roads that serve Disney’s theme parks.
The battle between DeSantis and the company, which led to Disney’s Central Florida district being restructured, stemmed from Disney denouncing DeSantis’s push for the Parental Rights in Education Act last year. Disney had maintained full autonomy over the district since its creation in 1967.