Might not be a bad time as construction here in Central Florida was booming before rates went up. There are probably a bunch of really nice unsold homes for sale everywhere in the state and builders/developers who are struggling big time now. Many simply over-stretched themselves when money was cheap. Just make sure there is no state appointed board to control your lot/land. [sarcasm]

DeSantis’ Reedy Creek board says Disney stripped its power


Orlando Sentinel
LAKE BUENA VISTA — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handpicked board overseeing Disney World’s government services is gearing up for a potential legal battle over a 30-year development agreement they say effectively renders them powerless to manage the entertainment giant’s future growth in Central Florida.

Ahead of an expected state takeover, the Walt Disney Co. quietly pushed through the pact and restrictive covenants that would tie the hands of future board members for decades, according to a legal presentation by the district’s lawyers on Wednesday.

The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District’s new Board of Supervisors voted to bring in outside legal firepower to examine the agreement, including a conservative Washington, D.C., law firm that has defended several of DeSantis’ culture war priorities.

“We’re going to have to deal with it and correct it,” board member Brian Aungst Jr. said. “It’s a subversion of the will of the voters and the Legislature and the governor. It completely circumvents the authority of this board to govern.”

Disney defended its actions.

“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,” an unsigned company statement read.

Taryn Fenske, a DeSantis spokeswoman, called the move “last-ditch efforts” to transfer “rights and authorities” from the district to Disney.

“An initial review suggests these agreements may have significant legal infirmities that would render the contracts void as a matter of law,” Fenske said in a prepared statement. “We are pleased the new governor-appointed board retained multiple financial and legal firms to conduct audits and investigate Disney’s past behavior.”

The previous board, which was known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District and controlled by Disney, approved the agreement on Feb. 8, the day before the Florida House voted to put the governor in charge.

Board members held a public meeting that day but spent little time discussing the document before unanimously approving it in a brief meeting.

DeSantis replaced those Disney-allied board members with five Republicans on Feb. 27, who discovered the binding agreement the previous board approved.

DeSantis and Disney clashed over the corporation’s opposition to what critics call the “don’t say gay” law, which limits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools.

The new DeSantis-aligned board expressed dismay over the previous board’s actions.

“This essentially makes Disney the government,” board member Ron Peri said. “This board loses, for practical purposes, the majority of its ability to do anything beyond maintaining the roads and maintaining basic infrastructure.”

Among other things, a “declaration of restrictive covenants” spells out that the district is barred from using the Disney name without the corporation’s approval or “fanciful characters such as Mickey Mouse.”

That declaration is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England,” according to the document. (Rule of Perpetuities)

A development agreement allows Disney to build projects at the highest density and the right to sell or assign those development rights to other district landowners without the board having any say, according to the presentation by the district’s new special legal counsel.

Disney and its affiliates own the vast majority of the land in the district, and other companies have operated there with the corporation’s blessing.

The development agreement bars the board from regulating the height of buildings, which would be solely under the purview of the Federal Aviation Administration.

The previous board also agreed to give Disney vast authority over its own buildings, according to its declaration. The agreement states that Disney must review any exterior changes to the district’s buildings to ensure consistent “theming” with Disney World.

Aungst said he is hopeful Disney will work with the board and correct the agreement in a “very collaborative manner.”

But board members also approved hiring four outside law firms with Chairman Martin Garcia citing a need for “lawyers that have extensive experience in dealing with protracted litigation against Fortune 500 companies.”

One of those firms is Cooper & Kirk, which has gotten more than $2.8 million in legal fees and contracts from the DeSantis administration to defend a controversial social media law, a ban on cruise ship COVID-19 “vaccine passport” requirements, and a restriction on felons seeking to vote.

Cooper & Kirk’s lawyers will bill $795 an hour, according to the firm’s engagement letter. The boutique firm’s roster of lawyers includes Adam Laxalt, who roomed with DeSantis when he was training at the Naval Justice School in 2005 and made an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate last year in Nevada.

The firm’s alumni include Republican U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

The board also approved bringing on Lawson Huck Gonzalez, a law firm that was launched earlier this year. One of its founders is Alan Lawson, a retired Florida Supreme Court justice.

The board approved two local firms as well — Nardella & Nardella and Waugh Grant.

Those firms were needed because of the vast legal resources Disney has at its disposal, Garcia said.

“What it looks like to me [is that] because Disney has the Magic Kingdom, they thought they could be king for a day,” he said.
[whip]







(Told you all before that this was a real property issue. Now it will get tied up in the courts well beyond DeSantis' governorship, unless Reedy Creek's new board or the state can get some type of Temporary Restraining Order, which IMNSHO won't happen.)

Disney desperately tried to maintain their unique status at the last second. I like it. Disney now directly has significant property rights that are unique to Disney that no person or company in the state has at least for now. They used to have those rights through RCID that nobody in the state had.

The new district should collect the fees and pay off the debt. Until that is done, no new roads, no widening, no new water, sewer, or electricity hook-ups. Pay off the debt before anything new or just dissolve itself at that point. Disney can then annex and rebuild under their cities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista which were set up back at the beginning as a back-up to keep Orlando or Kissimmee from annexing.

The funny part is the district can’t use the Disney name or characters. When I did consulting work for Reedy Creek the RCID employees wore name badges identical to anyone working in the party. If they were in a park (which we would do for lunch) with their badge on and were asked a question by a guest, they had to assist. Once a year they had to trade jobs with someone in a park for a day. Hardly sounds like an independent government!

Couldn't happen to a better bunch of groomers.

As a lawyer, I see it as a brilliant strategic move. Knew from the beginning it would end up in court. Totality of the legal strategy and sandbagging make me LOVE IT! And, every lawyer who has posted about it on my legal list serve, including even the far-right ones, are impressed with the strategy- and many of them are also fervent anti-Disney DeSantis supporters.

Disney's debt is none of our business, just like its profits and other financials aren't (unless you are in the stock market for Disney). It is a private business just like any other private business. It, and it alone owns that land. And, it may needs new additional infrastructure on its own land, subject to codes- let's not quibble about which code(s) should apply yet.

The lawyers hired by the state are uber expensive and will end up billing us for millions upon millions over the years.

And, since everything was filed BEFORE the bill became law, even though to work-around the coming new law, what Disney did was legit.

I can see a case like this going to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lastly, laws cannot be applied to conduct- after the fact. .You cannot apply a new law retroactively. Look up [/u]ex-post facto law[u]s if you are interested... 🇨🇮

Disney is a public company contrary to your post. They have a board of directors like any other public company.

"The company, which has been public since 1940, trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with ticker symbol DIS and has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1991. In August 2020, just under two-thirds of the stock was owned by large financial institutions."

The advantages Disney held...no other company had those exclusive and inclusive rights to operate under. Building entire parks, resorts as well as all of the infrastructure it took to do it multiple times over all while shirking the taxpaying citizens??? It's when the California based company decided vocally it was going to meddle in politics in the state of Florida with regards to a bill (you never read and pushed a narrative that it was anti-gay) that restricted the sexualization of children in public schools in this state grades K-3.

Disney has stated they don't plan to fight it. They probably should've stuck to what they used to do best which was entertain us. Instead they wanted to push LGBTQABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP garbage on ALL of their stations, on ALL of their shows, on ALL of their movies and would fund and fight any state that wouldn't allow them to do that. Their own words, not mine. That is twisted and perverse. They deserved to be stripped away of their special rights because they're a bad neighbor. How much did Sea World and Universal Studios have to pony up each and every time they added to their park or created a new one or resort? That was an unfair advantage that should never been allowed to begin with. Even with their clout, I wouldn't shed a single tear if they decided to shutter the entire place and move to another state that would allow them to do what they wanted and meddle in state politics. They're free to do what they want.

My point was that Reedy Creek Irrigation District has 1 billion in debt for things it bought to service Disney. Not Disney debt. That was the real reason RCID could not be dissolved. Now it is the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District and it has that same $1 billion in debt. With that debt comes assets. Assets that can be sold.

The Disney employees who ran the RCID board transferred most power out to Disney and got very cute with the King Charles clause. They made themselves above the government. They didn’t transfer out the power to tax or to liquidate.

Raises taxes to pay off the debt quicker or just liquidate the entire district now. Those would make some nice toll roads!

The King Charles reference is not "cute." It is tactically necessary for proper legal reasons. Use of such language is S.O.P. to make the covenant run (enforceable) practically forever. That language does it.

21 years has a legal reason too- The Rule of Perpetuities. Read up on Ex Post Facto legal enforcement too if it interests you...

Rhetorically, maybe think about it this way: If you knew a new law was coming that would drastically change your tax liability once it comes into effect- wouldn't you re-arrange your assets to avoid or minimize the unavoidable loss you would incur, to your advantage, due to the new law?

Anyone who believes Disney did not pay any and/or generate tax money to and for the state of Florida needs to do some Googling.
Reuters, Barons and WSJ might be a good places to start.
Snopes is way too easy.

it's too obvious for you to need to point the direction...
but I understand the audience.

Look into the permitting of their parks and resorts Robert.

Too easy.

Another perspective by someone who doesn't like Disney's uber status:


How Disney outfoxed DeSantis - and why it’s not all so funny
l
Orlando Sentinel
If you look at Mickey Mouse’s hands, you’ll notice he doesn’t have a middle finger. But if he did, he most surely flipped it at Ron DeSantis this past week.

Florida’s governor had told the world that he’d taken on Disney and won. But while DeSantis was busy tweeting, Disney operatives were busy working, quietly rewriting legal papers in an attempt to ensure the governor’s tough talk never amounted to anything more.

Basically, Disney was playing 4-D chess while the governor’s legal team was fumbling with a bag of checkers. And by the time Team DeSantis figured out what had happened Wednesday, its members could do little more than fume and pout.

DeSantis is so used to picking on easy targets — drag queens and transgender teenagers — that he wasn’t prepared to do battle with someone with the power to fight back.

It’s easy for DeSantis critics to laugh and scoff. Donald Trump certainly did, mocking his former protégé for getting bested by a cartoon mouse.

But the reality is that this whole situation stinks.

In fact, allow me to submit a perhaps unpopular take — that there are no purely good guys or motives in this fight.

Ron DeSantis and GOP lawmakers are trying to use bully power and petty politics to punish a private company for expressing opinions they dislike — in this case, Disney’s opinion that LGBTQ families should be treated like human beings.

But the petulant pols are so bad at what they do, they’ve proven themselves incapable of understanding the laws they’re trying to manipulate.

Still, Disney doesn’t deserve to run its own government. Many of us have argued as much for years. Unfortunately, lawmakers in this state have been happy to do Disney special favors for decades — as long as Disney cut them checks.

Just two years ago, DeSantis signed a law exempting Disney from a crackdown on social media companies after the company gave his political committee $50,000.

The ludicrous bill, which was invalidated by a federal judge who noted the special-interest favoritism, included a carve-out that exempted any company that “owns and operates a theme park.” DeSantis signed the bill less than two months after cashing Disney’s check and after records show his staffers swapped emails about the language Disney lobbyists wanted in the law.

DeSantis clearly did a favor for a corporate donor, blowing a castle-sized hole in the tough-on-corporations narrative he tries to peddle. In fact, a big part of why corporate America likes DeSantis is that they know he plays ball.

Still, those of us who never thought Disney deserved its own corporate kingdom might’ve still appreciated politicians doing the right thing for the wrong reason — except they were too incompetent to get it done.

First, lawmakers passed a bill that attempted to dissolve Disney’s Reedy Creek government district. But they hadn’t done their homework to understand current laws or that $1 billion or more worth of bonds were tied up in Disney’s self-controlled government. So they had to try again.

To show how you unprepared these people were, just read the two bills they passed.

The first focused on “dissolving certain independent special districts.”

The second said: “the Reedy Creek Improvement District is not dissolved as of June 1, 2023, but continues in full force and effect under its new name.”

So the second bill explicitly said they had not done the very thing they vowed to do in the first. My cat Leona has a better understanding of state statutes.

Also, the ultimate “solution” GOP lawmakers devised was not what they promised.[/h]

DeSantis had vowed to make Disney “follow the same laws every other company follows in the state of Florida.” I actually like that plan. That’s how it should’ve been all along. But that’s not what he did.

Instead, he put a group of hand-picked political appointees in charge of the private company. No other company in America works like that. DeSantis didn’t put Disney on the same footing as everyone else. He tried to put Disney under his own personal thumb. And Disney seems to have found a way to at least temporarily thwart him.

If these guys actually had a desire to do the right thing — before Disney cut them off financially — they wouldn’t have tried to twice ram through poorly thought-out laws. They would’ve asked a team of smart government-law experts to devise a way to sunset Disney’s special status in a logical, legal matter.

But logic has taken a beating in Tallahassee over the last two years as book-banning, pronoun-legislating and drag-queen-bashing have become the rage.

I don’t begrudge anyone who laughed at DeSantis last week for getting out-brained by a mouse. It was cringe-inducingly amusing to watch his campaign team stage a meltdown on Twitter, claiming that the governor’s clear loss was really a big win because (just you wait) the governor is always thinking “10 steps ahead.”

The governor’s own appointees had just admitted Disney had outsmarted them. Yet Team DeSantis was claiming it was all part of the master plan. Sure.

The reality is that taxpayers and good government are the big losers here.

The DeSantis appointees have already vowed to hire four different law firms to fight Disney, paying the politically connected barristers as much as $795 an hour. And at least for now, Disney gets to keep its special status.

So sure, laugh at DeSantis. But I’m still not rooting for Disney.

While the company has done some great philanthropic things in this community, it has also used money, power and even free park tickets to warp public policy in this state for decades. Everything from secret text messages with county commissioners to try to deny sick time for local workers to back-channel messaging with the governor’s staff to request special favors.

I’m not cheering for the powerful corporation or the pandering politicians. I’m rooting for good government that doesn’t cater to special interests — the one thing neither side seems to want.

[email protected]

His articles sure seem to have a theme…

Liquidate the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.

Ours does wonder representing two companies that own 98.2% of all hotels in getting taxpayers to fund boondoggles that help the two companies.

Disney strips DeSantis of his fairy tale ending. Good.



Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board
Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent months (and an entire chapter of his new book) boasting about his victory over a “woke” corporation after demanding that the state Legislature yank the Reedy Creek Improvement District from under Walt Disney Company control.

Clearly, the governor thought he’d written the perfect fairy tale and cast himself as the hero — only to discover that Disney executives flipped the script.

In broad daylight, no less. Before it was infested with the governor’s band of political buddies, the Reedy Creek board signed binding contracts that transfer most of the control of district-owned facilities and future development back into Disney’s hands, and ban the district from using any Disney trademarks. Now the district, renamed the “Central Florida Tourism Oversight District,” appears to be just a payroll, a bundle of debt and tax levies that probably can’t be disturbed.

The governor’s response is classic DeSantis. He now wants to waste some of that money on a small army of very expensive attorneys in an effort to unwind those agreements.

In other words, DeSantis’ plan for the district he seized is to take tax money from Disney and use it to sue Disney, in an attempt to circumvent Disney’s control over land Disney owns.

Confused yet? We haven’t even gotten to the role of the Princess Lilibet, who lives in a magical, far-away land called Santa Barbara. (What’s a Disney story without a princess?)

Our story so far
Most Central Floridians remember how this spat started: During a special session of the Florida Legislature, Rep. Randy Fine introduced a sneak attack to abolish the Reedy Creek district. It was an apparent attempt to punish Disney executives for mild, belated criticism of DeSantis-backed bills, including attacks on diversity training and the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which targeted discussions of sexual orientation in schools. (Side note: Fine, a Brevard Republican, asserted last week that DeSantis has since urged him to apply to run Florida Atlantic University. We’re getting Jafar vibes off that one.)

Critics were quick to point out that there were a few reasons not to straight-up abolish the district. Or a billion: The district, created more than 50 years ago to give the company more control over its own permitting and planning for the 38.5 square miles of then-undeveloped land it had purchased, now carries about $1 billion in bond debt.

And some huge, real world responsibilities, including permitting, planning and critical utilities for Disney’s four theme parks, two water parks, a sports complex, a collection of hotels that total more than 40,000 guest rooms and Disney Springs, with its 24-screen movie theater, House of Blues and Cirque du Soleil. The district operates two incorporated cities, full-fledged fire and EVAC departments complete with cranky unions, 170 lane miles of roads, a huge electric plant and natural-gas distribution system, water and wastewater systems.

Many — including this editorial board — have been uneasy about the power that the Reedy Creek district allows Disney to wield, or the untold magnitude of tax payments it’s avoided over the years by taking advantage of its ability to issue government bonds. The district even had the authority (which it never used) to construct a nuclear power plant. But there’s no doubt that the company backed its power with its own cash. Its hand-picked board levied property taxes that are triple or quadruple what other Central Florida cities and counties charge — taxes that Disney was charging itself. Under the first 2022 legislation that would have abolished the board outright, that tax burden and bond debt could have transferred to Orange and Osceola taxpayers.

Without so much as an “oops, my bad,” DeSantis’ minions wrote another secret plan. During a special session in December, lawmakers obediently adopted it. The new legislation took few powers away from the district — but did wrest control from company hands and declared that DeSantis had sole authority to appoint the district’s board.

Unfortunately, those high-priced lawyers and DeSantis’ own staff apparently didn’t bother to pay attention to the agreements the old Reedy Creek board signed off on in the meetings before the state Legislature approved the governor’s hotheaded demands. We’re not sure why. The meetings were open to the public and duly noticed.

As members of those high-priced law firms explained, the old board enacted agreements that transfer most of the control back to the company. There’s also a contract that restricts the district from using any Disney trademarks or changing design aspects of any district-owned properties — ending any possibility of renaming Disney Springs’ parking garages “Ron” and “Casey.”

They were all approved in the Sunshine. They meet the deadlines the Legislature itself set — after the agreements were ratified. And they were rolled out well in advance of the June deadline the first Reedy Creek law set for abolishing the district.

There’s even a hidden Mickey: The restrictive covenants (in effect, a contract between the district and Disney) don’t expire 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,” a legal (yet delightful) maneuver to protect it against challenges. That’s where Lilibet, the toddler daughter of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, comes into play: She turns two in June. And as the Sentinel’s Jeff Weiner points out, Windsors tend to live a very long time.

Through a spokesperson, DeSantis declared that the new district will rev up its pricey legal superpower and wrest back control, fulminating about “significant legal infirmities” but failing to identify any, and complaining about last-minute maneuvers after launching not one, but two sneak attacks on a publicly held corporation. We suspect he’s living in Fantasyland.

A word to DeSantis
And that’s where this ride should end.

This was a foolish, petty and ultimately selfish political vendetta that could have ended up far worse. If Disney executives had responded to DeSantis in the same vengeful vein — by pulling back even a small fraction of the resources the company has invested in Florida — the economic wreckage could have been massive. Instead, company executives and district officials stayed quiet, bided their time and executed a plan that is both elegant and witty.

From now on, Gov. DeSantis, save your tantrums for your taxpayer-funded mansion and endless trips to court donors and rally support in other states.

Whenever you happen to be in Florida, focus on your actual job: Running a massive state government where people are dying every day of drug overdoses and mass shootings that you barely acknowledge. Where school boards across the state are grimly awaiting the final price tag of the economically reckless voucher bill you just signed. Where insurance rates are skyrocketing and damage claims from back-to-back hurricanes are being summarily denied. Where, every day, we’re discovering more cracks your machinations have inflicted on the fundamental integrity of Florida’s own government.

Stop letting your inner Donald control your behavior. (In this case, we mean Donald Duck.) All you’ve managed to do so far is create a situation where Disney has more control, and potentially more secrecy, than it ever did. No matter how you try to play this, it seems apparent that you were outplayed.

So take your advice from the Queen (and in this case, we mean Queen Elsa). Let. It. Go.



The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick.

Iger vows $17B Disney World expansion, calls DeSantis ‘anti-business’


Orlando Sentinel

The Walt Disney Co. plans to invest $17 billion in Walt Disney World over the next 10 years and create 13,000 new jobs, CEO Bob Iger said Monday, as he accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of being vindictive over Disney’s response to the so-called “don’t say gay” law last year.

Iger’s remarks came in response to an audience question during Disney’s annual shareholder meeting in California over what steps Disney will take to protect shareholders in an anticipated legal battle among DeSantis, Disney and the former Reedy Creek Improvement District.

Disney World will host 50 million visitors this year, and its planned expansion will bring even more guests and employees to the state in the years to come, along with generating more taxes, Iger said.

“Our point on this is that any action that thwarts those efforts, simply to retaliate for a position the company took, sounds not just anti-business, but it sounds anti-Florida, and I’ll just leave it at that,” he said.

Iger did not provide any details about the expansion plans for Orlando but the company’s 30-year plan calls for a possible fifth major theme park.

The latest fight emerged because just before the state takeover, the old district board approved agreements that the new DeSantis-appointed district’s leadership says keep them from altering Disney’s long-term development agreements, among other restrictions.

Disney said last week the agreements were “appropriate” and lawfully made with former district leadership. The current board, being renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, has vowed to investigate them with the aid of four law firms.

On Monday, DeSantis requested that Florida’s chief inspector general launch an investigation into Disney’s actions.

During the company’s annual meeting, Iger also said Disney loves Florida and has heavily invested in the state over the past 50 years in its expansion of the Disney World resort, as the state’s largest taxpayer and through its charitable actions.

The state’s relationship with Florida has “kind of been a two-way street,” Iger said.

But that changed last year when former CEO Bob Chapek spoke out against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation, which restricts discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in early-grade classrooms. That drew DeSantis’ ire and led to a law dissolving the company’s special land use, utilities and public service district, Reedy Creek.

“And while the company may have not handled the position that it took very well, a company has a right to freedom of speech just like individuals do,” Iger said.

He said DeSantis dissolved Reedy Creek “in effect to seek to punish a company for its exercise of a constitutional right.”

“And that just seems really wrong to me, against any company or individual but particularly against the company that means so much to the state that you live in,” he added.

In response, DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske said, “while a company has First Amendment rights, it does not have the right to run its own government and operate outside the bounds of Florida law.

“The Florida Legislature and Governor DeSantis worked to put Disney on an even playing field, and Disney got caught attempting to undermine Florida’s duly enacted legislation in the 11th hour,” she wrote.

During the Monday meeting, Iger fielded questions and remarks from shareholders on both sides of the spectrum. Some supported Disney taking a stance against legislation called harmful to the LGBTQ+ community and producing content representative of gay and transgender identities. Others said the company had no business pushing a perceived “woke” agenda.

DeSantis has frequently used the word “woke” to attack Disney.

Iger said his job is to “strive to do what I think is best for our business” and for Disney’s employees in speaking out. There are times Disney will encounter “gray areas” when it chooses to weigh in, he continued.

“In almost all cases, it has to be because it directly affects our business or our people,” Iger said. “And I think if you look back for decades, corporate America has expressed themselves on numerous issues of both right and wrong, and our country, I think, is better off for that.”

Disney has gotten criticism “for what some perceive to be agenda-driven content,” he said to one caller Monday, noting he is “sensitive to that” but understands Disney cannot please everyone.

“Our primary mission needs to be to entertain, and then through our entertainment to continue to have a positive impact on the world,” Iger said. “... We’re committed to delivering age-appropriate content for family audiences, while also telling stories that reflect the world around us and that foster a greater understanding, greater perspective, greater acceptance of all people.”

Disney’s shareholders on Monday voted against a proposal that would have required the company to report its political expenditures “against its publicly stated company values and policies.”

The measure, introduced on behalf of the Educational Foundation of America and an unnamed co-filer, mentioned Disney’s donations to supporters of the Parental Rights in Education bill and political organizations lobbying against abortion access.

Monday’s meeting was Iger’s first shareholder presentation since returning to the company as CEO. Iger previously led Disney as its CEO and chairman from 2005 to 2020.

He did not offer any information about Disney’s recent layoffs.

The company is in the middle of cutting 7,000 jobs across the company as part of a larger effort to trim $5.5 billion in costs.

Ike Permutter, chairman of Marvel Entertainment, was among those terminated. Perlmutter was laid off last week following an unsuccessful attempt to appoint his friend Nelson Peltz to the Disney board last fall, The New York Times reported.

Can I get this one shorthand or maybe audio book.

The Stupid War Between Disney and DeSantis

Neither the company nor the Florida governor should want an extended brawl over sex ed for third-graders.



WSJ
Disney is still living with a mistake quite a few business leaders have made in recent years, letting itself be bullied—or bullying itself—into taking a needless political stand.

Last year’s Florida law, contrary to the “don’t say gay” moniker promoted by opponents, was reasonable. The interests on both sides were reasonable. LGBT people want their lifestyles respected and not stigmatized in the classroom. Parents want their third-graders not to be bombarded with messages they or their parents aren’t ready for.

Some activists clinging to an issue fret teachers might now interpret the law to mean they can stigmatize away, but the law says the opposite. It prohibits them from raising such subjects at all. In essence, it says such discussion should begin in the fourth grade.

Disney at first steered clear but then tripped over its own feet by unwisely projecting on Florida its own internal fights, then raging at the same time, over what constitutes “age-appropriate” representation in shows and movies aimed at kids—ironically, the phrase CEO Bob Iger lately highlights for guidance is also the phrase enshrined in the Florida law.

When previous CEO Bob Chapek panicked, of course, it didn’t matter what the law said. It didn’t matter, around the same time, what Georgia’s new voting law said either. CEOs ran as fast as their quivering knees could carry them to whichever side was calling the other side racist.

But hardly to his credit, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also given the impression of enjoying the fight too much for fundraising and news-making purposes, rather than helping Florida’s leading corporate citizen get back in the state’s good graces.

He gives the impression also of thinking the electorate consists entirely of political hobbyists looking for entertainment rather than sound governance.

For anyone test-driving Mr. DeSantis as a possible president, the real mistake was needlessly parlaying the original dispute into an open-ended fight. He mobilized legislators to take away the county-like authority that Disney, since 1967, exercised over 25,000 acres where its Florida theme parks are located. In duly notified public meetings, Disney used the interim to transfer back to itself certain business-like powers, over its trademarks and characters, over the design and appearance of future park buildings.

Any sane company would have done so, rather than let purely commercial decisions be handed to a politically appointed board at the beck of Florida’s governor. Even more so because Gov. DeSantis seemed to want to load the board with his anti-gender-wokeness allies, as if this has anything to do with roads, sewers, police and fire protection.

With the help of Florida’s cackling if legally uncomprehending liberal media, Mr. DeSantis may also have felt obscurely mocked by one provision. Related to a common-law prejudice against perpetuities, it conventionally assures that the transferred rights will remain with Disney at least until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England . . .”

For whatever reason, Mr. DeSantis has decided he now needs to fight a possibly endless legal war to claw back these changes by the now-defunct Reedy Creek Improvement District, never mind that the changes have zippo to do with sex ed for 8-year-olds.

All this makes Mr. DeSantis look a mite unbalanced, with a Trumpian propensity to crank to 11 a dispute that would be better left at 4. The lessons are many but come down to a time-honored admonition for both sides: Grow up.

Very large contracts doled out to corporate chieftains are meant to make them brave in the face of risks that make sense to diversified shareholders, which are economic risks, never mind a CEO’s own natural incentive to seek a gilded safety.

Mr. Iger at one point claimed the Florida law was a matter of right and wrong, which is exactly what it’s not. It’s a conflict with defensible views on both sides. When business leaders adopt the uncompromising language of their mau-mauers, neither safety nor shareholder interests are served. It only indicates to the mau-mauists that corporate terrorism works. Mr. DeSantis is playing the same game from the other side.

Mr. Iger has now allowed that Disney did not handle its opposition to the Florida law well, though this recent statement wasn’t what the press most wanted to quote. On Thursday, he further offered to sit down with Florida’s governor to bury the hatchet. His shareholders would thank him. The right response from day one would have been to wish Florida voters and elected officials well in dealing with a knotty question, while hoping consensus would be achieved and all sides would at least feel respected and that their views were heard.

But when CEOs instead start lauding themselves for their courage in “taking a stand,” they should understand nobody believes they are brave. Just the opposite: They hear only a surrender to personal terrorism and bullying in a way that belies their duty to put shareholders before their own desire not to be called names.

Gawsh!





Disney skipped a step required by Florida law in its 11th-hour agreement, according to those familiar with the proceedings.

Disney leadership thought the company out-maneuvered Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis this year after a last-minute agreement with local officials gave the theme park virtually unlimited developmental power. But sources tell The Federalist that Disney’s corporate lawyers missed the fine print in Florida statute governing tourist districts.

In February, supervisors running the Reedy Creek Improvement District signed an 11th-hour resolution to hand Disney maximum authority over the company’s 27,000 acres in central Florida. The late agreement effectively left the DeSantis-appointed successors on the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board — which replaced the Reedy Creek board — powerless to govern Disney in their own state.

“This essentially makes Disney the government,” said Ron Peri, one of the new board members appointed by the governor, at a Feb. 27 meeting. “This board loses, for practical purposes, the majority of its ability to do anything beyond maintain the roads and maintain basic infrastructure.”

In early April, DeSantis ordered an investigation into Disney’s last-minute power grab. A source familiar with the investigation revealed to The Federalist that Disney skipped key steps when amending its developmental agreement, rendering the resolution null and void.

According to Florida statute, local governments — in this case, the Reedy Creek board — are required to take three steps when making changes to special district agreements such as the one that established Disney’s quasi-governmental status. They must hold two public hearings, advertise those hearings in a local newspaper, and offer notice by mail to “all affected property owners before the first public hearing.”

In a statement to the Associated Press, Disney said the agreements took place in public.

“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,” the company said.

Disney’s first hearing on the issue was held Jan. 25, and the second on Feb. 8. The company advertised proceedings in the Orlando Sentinel. The last requirement of Florida law, however, that all affected property owners be given notice by mail, was skipped entirely, according to sources familiar with Disney’s proceedings. The missed mandate means the company would have to restart the process for its 11th-hour resolution to be valid.

The agreement circumvented legislation DeSantis signed last year to strip Disney of its special self-governing privileges. Disney’s last-minute move drew a cascade of headlines mocking the Florida governor as a conservative dunce who got it handed to him by Mickey Mouse.

“How Disney just beat Ron DeSantis,” ran a headline from Vox.

“Here’s how Mickey Mouse outplayed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis,” read an op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times.

Even former President Donald Trump roasted the Florida governor for getting “outplayed, outsmarted, and embarrassed by Mickey Mouse and Disney.”

Memes circulated on the internet.

But the governor may have the last laugh, in a fight that began last year after Disney’s aggressive activism against the Parental Rights in Education Act, inaccurately branded the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Disney blasted DeSantis over the law, which barred discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms. It was around the same time that audio leaked of Disney employees boasting about implementing their “not-at-all-secret gay agenda.”

“Florida’s HB 1557, also known as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, should never have passed and should never have been signed into law,” the company said in a statement upon the bill’s signage. “Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that.”

DeSantis said Disney’s activism “crossed the line.”

“We’re going to make sure we’re fighting back when people are threatening our parents and threatening our kids,” he said at a press conference in Tallahassee.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/16/exclusive-disneys-11th-hour-move-to-evade-desantis-oversight-is-legally-void-per-source/