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No, he is stupid. He is pandering to angry, violent voters who need to hate something or someone. He is always willing to throw them a pound of flesh.
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“You wanna make us go away? Cool, now you gotta pay off our debts”. That’s the extortion I’m referring I’m to. Like I said before, everybody sucks here.
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I don’t think Disney has a choice in the matter. It’s not something they’re doing, it’s something DeSantis is doing.
ETA: DeSantis’ action will foist the preexisting debt onto those two counties, won’t it? Granted, Disney could volunteer to pay it off themselves. But hell, I wouldn’t, in these circumstances. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the whole rigamarole.
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Yes, except it’s not usually called extortion when you have to do something you previously of your own volition promised to do.
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That’s not “extortion” so much as it is “pointing out the provisions of the law Florida itself enacted.”
Disney never would have taken on billions in bond debt for public infrastructure in the first place if they hadn’t had some guarantee that the state wouldn’t yank control of the district away and leave them holding the bag.
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That’s a consequence of the dissolution law that was passed without looking at any of the technical details of what dissolution means. That’s also not Disney, but the RCID district itself.
That RCID has outstanding bonds isn’t some surprise or unknown plot. The law passed even says “all assets and debts are passed to the enclosing government”. A law that RCID had no input into making.
This might be better: “You wanna make us go away? Cool, did you notice we have $1 billion in debts you specifically said you would be taking over?”
Hardly extortion.
Now, later on in the time that’s coming next, when the FL legislature decides if they’re just going to hit the undo button or try to negotiate some new district that’s the same but different than the current district. If they do the latter, which seems difficult since there’s no policy complaints or goals around the current district, then I would expect Disney as the largest entity within the district to ask for outlandish things that make it a better deal. That could be Disney extorting the FL legislature for a better deal since they’ll need Disney’s buy in to avoid the impacts of that debt falling to the county. Alternatively, the FL legislature could just hit undo and be totally fine. They don’t actually have any issues with how the District works. All their issues are about what Disney says. So, if anyone is doing the extortion here, it’s the FL legislature. “That’s a nice district you got there, you should watch what you say or something could happen to it.”
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Duke Power thumbs its nose at rules already in place. Giving the company the freedom to act as its own governing authority, even if only to increase taxes on itself and improve some infrastructure, probably would embolden them to be more of a problem.
In the case of Reynolds, look up the history of tobacco mill towns and the ways RJR and others were able to control and abuse their workers. (same thing for textile manufacturers and coal mining operations). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many corporate entities had fairly free rein in making their own rules. It didn’t turn out well.
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Except the RCID doesn’t give any of those rights to Disney.
It doesn’t excuse them from any controls, rules, or laws of the surrounding governments.
It imposes additional rules and costs on top of them.
It does give them the ability to set priority, schedules, and determine importance plus level of service.
If they wanted their roads and other infrastructure to only match the containing area they could. But, they cannot make them worse or excuse them from anything.
EDIT: If the RCID government replaced the county government control, things would be different and those types of abuses could exist. But, it’s in addition to not instead of. In those old company towns, the company was the only rules, not some extra rule on top of an existing government.
If we want to be mad about what RCID does and that it’s been designed so that the only people within RCID are Disney which allows them to set control of how RCID works, we should be mad about what RCID actually does not something it doesn’t actually do.
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I know. And Disney (at least in this case) has been a good corporate citizen. But I don’t think that would be a universal finding if other large companies had similar setups.
Imagine Duke Power has the same privilege as Disney, including the ability to build their own nuclear power plant. I can see them readily taking advantage. As well as continuing to have local government provide fire, water, and sewer while running their own police that gum up the works whenever it’s convenient.
Large chunks of my education have been covered, indirectly, by tobacco. These companies do a lot of good things, both out of true generosity and for whitewashing their reputations. But giving them any leeway to be special is asking for trouble.
I think one of the major reasons that RCID is a net good is that Disney’s in the business of good tourism. But take away all of the regular visitors and a lot of the motivation to be “good” goes away.
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Google, and the Duke Energy website says that they have 6 nuclear power plants ALREADY.
There’s lots and lots of private companies that own and operate nuclear power plants. A bunch of government owned and operated ones too.
If Duke Energy, Disney, or RCID (since Disney and RCID are different and distinct) run a nuclear power plant they would all need to meet the exact same regulations. The rules created by having RCID could only add additional rules, they could not excuse from anything.
There’s tons of stories and political statements that RCID gives Disney some special power that let’s them get out of something. It’s simply not true though for most of the examples and all the common things people think of. The amazing super power that RCID gives Disney is the ability to set priorities and goals of how the public services are provided and when. To get this super power, Disney pays a huge extra tax bill to RCID. Those taxes are what’s used to pay for these things. This is why people say Disney pays for them. Disney pays RCID taxes, RCID pays for projects using that tax revenue. Without this super power, the county, and all tax payers, would need to pay for these things, or they just wouldn’t get done. Not getting done is the most likely and it would detract from the overall Walt Disney World experience along with impacting operations at all the public/private interfaces.
If you have an example of how RCID would allow Disney to do something bad, I would like to hear it.
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Reedy Creek taxes itself at 13.57 mills. By law, cities and counties cannot tax property at a rate higher than 10 mills.
when Reedy Creek issues municipal bonds, it notes the following statutory language in its prospective.
“The State of Florida pledges to the holders of any bonds issued under this Act that it will not limit or alter the rights of the District to own, acquire, construct, reconstruct, improve, maintain, operate or furnish the projects or to levy and collect the taxes, assessments, rentals, rates, fees, tolls, fares and other charges provided for herein … until all such bonds together with interest thereon, and all costs and expenses in connection with any action or proceeding by or on behalf of such holders, are fully met and discharged.”
If one was of a conspiratorial mindset, one could argue that the RIC could continuously issue bonds simply to preserve RICs existence in the future. I’m sure there would be ways around this; the Florida Legislature chose not to use them in order to preserve the existence of a culture war in the future.
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I’ve seen it reported that the FL legislature has the power to prevent future bond sales. So, they could do that, and then run out the clock until they’re all paid off, which could take a long time.
I’ve also seen opinions that taking that step could trigger the “not limit…improve, maintain, operate” clause anyway. Since, limiting ability to raise future funds could impact maintenance of the things the prior bonds were used to build and are the thing generating the tax revenue that pays back those bonds.
The future impact is a lot more questionable about which way it could go. But that bond language, presumably based on the district creation, certainly sounds like a contract. Which would become a federal issue then about the securities contract and if the sate is trying to change law that breaks that contract.
Definitely going to keep some lawyers busy.
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There’s also the First Amendment issue of punishing a company for speaking out against an awful law.
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I was never a fan of Disney being allowed to be its own government but this is just delightful use of the very laws the politicians created to woo Disney down there.
The party of “law and order” once more hoist on its own petard. They seem to be becoming stupider and stupider and driven more by emotional responses that would be crass from a four year old.
it’s as if they have all been snacking on old paint chips regularly.
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About the best I can come up with is that they don’t have to follow local zoning or construction laws so they could build anything they like!!!11!!
But that’s sort of the whole point so…
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My understanding is that this is not true. At least not the way politicians are currently saying. That, while yes RCID sets the zoning rules for the land, all the construction laws and codes for safety and what not, for how stuff is constructed must be the same or better than the enclosing counties. Which, the EPCOT Building code that’s enforced in RCID is more strict than the county.
Meaning, if they want to build X someplace, they don’t need to worry that it’s not zoned for X. They can just get the zoning changed to allow X at that location. But, X still needs to meet all construction codes for X. Even then, they’ve got some strict rules they follow. I know there’s one about conversation land use. Something like if they want to change a parcel that’s currently conversation land into something else, they need to create new conversation land somewhere else (and more of it) to offset the change. It’s one of the reasons you see buying sprees every now and then.
That’s like me saying the left corner of my backyard is only zoned for bird feeders. Then, when I want to put a kids play structure there, I need to ask the house government to change the zoning to allow the kids play structure in my backyard, that I already own. But, I’m still forced to build the play structure how the area I live in says is safe. I cannot just put up a board with jagged nails.
Extra bonus, if the change will impact water management, both Disney and I need to get that approved by the water management area too and cannot just change it.
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When Disneyland Anaheim wants a new road, it has to submit a plan to the local government and wait. When Disney World wants to the same thing, the process is streamlined.
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Disney has simply jumped the queue,
of the many thousands trying to tell Florida…etc.
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disney itself doesn’t have a great environmental track record. granted i don’t have a good handle on how much rcid enabled that or not. i could buy the argument other private developers would have had similar outcomes
i could absolutely see disney keeping debt on their books precisely to fend off this sort of dissolution. i would if i were a multinational company
don’t know if extortion is quite the right word currently. it could be used for extortion certainly… in other circumstances
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