Government Run Amok in Florida

“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.”
James Madison

Have you been following what has been going on between the Disney folks down in Florida and its Governor Ron DeSantis? I will confess that crazy stuff seems to happen all of the time in Florida so I kind of passed it by. Also, I have been struggling with the blog that I INTENDED to write about Russian Imperialism in Ukraine versus American imperialism of the 1800’s. It turns out that contrary to my favorite axiom, I don’t always know what I think when I read what I wrote. But I digress. What the heck is going on down there?

Those of you who have been to Florida, which is probably most of us, know that Disney is a BIG DEAL in Florida. They employ more than 60,000 people in Florida. Actually, Disney is a big deal EVERYWHERE, they are a behemoth of a company (over 200,000 employees worldwide), with many and various businesses in its portfolio with a 2022 annual revenue of about $140 billion according to Statista, with assets of about $204 billion. Of the $140 billion in revenue about $29 billion comes from its amusement park businesses. These numbers are so large and the company so diverse it is really hard to get a grip on them.

Disney came to Florida in the mid 1960’s. The Disney people did not want to replicate the rampant and uncontrolled commercialization of land around their parks in California. They made an unusual request, that they “tax themselves” and provide for themselves, taking over many of the roles that a local government would typically handle – like planning and zoning, building inspections, public works and police and fire. The state obliged by forming the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the government body that has given Disney its unique powers in Central Florida for more than half a century. As someone who has worked for local government, I can tell you that this IS unique.

So how did it work out? Well since then, Orange and Osceola, the counties in which the District lies, grew from 370,000 people to 1.8 million. That population explosion engendered urban sprawl throughout the counties. But if population growth was the goal, one would have to say that things worked out. Some typical critics of urban sprawl and its effects on the environment feel that the Reedy Creek District has done a better job than the county and city governments that watched over the balance of the lands in the counties. The District, said Charles Lee of the Florida Audubon Society, is a model for good growth management and land use. “If you could take the vision template of how they treated the land and insisted that other people do as good a job as Disney did inside his boundaries, a lot of the mess you are seeing in Orange and Osceola counties would not have happened.” But does Disney pay taxes to governments other than the Reedy District? A 2021 report by Reuters put that tab at about $780 million per year, not a big dent in its revenue but its not chicken feed either.

Well, it seems like everything was going well in the Land of the Mouse. The Disney company is no fool. They know they need political clout, and they have the wherewithal to buy it. How much do they spend? An exact figure is hard to know given the number of corporate entities that Disney has and the plethora of their political action committees. But estimates range certainly into the tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to local and state candidates each election cycle. In fact, the company donated more than $100,000 to DeSantis’ campaign fund in 2021. Coincidentally, later in 2021, after working with the governor’s staff, a new law designed to crack down on big tech companies and social media, contained one notable little additional clause: Social media as defined by the bill, “does not include any information service, system, Internet search engine, or access software provider operated by a company that owns and operates a theme park or entertainment complex.” Other companies affected by the regulations howled, but to no avail. So, it seemed like things were going along the way they usually do. What the heck happened?

The relationship between the two started to sour beginning with how Disney dealt with COVID mandates, facemasks etc. The Governor didn’t think they were following his lead. Apparently, Disney also had the temerity to think that they could express their opinion of another new bill. The bill would restrict classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity. Various rights groups complained loudly about the law. They may have put pressure on Disney to speak up but in any event speak up they did. Disney vowed to help get the law repealed or struck down by the courts and to stand up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country.

DeSantis was “irritated” to say the least. It took a bit, but he devised a way that he thought would teach Disney a lesson. He began to work with colleagues in the legislature to strip Disney of its special governing power. After some fits and starts and concerns about violating state laws, the legislature came up with a plan that would provide for DeSantis to appoint the members of the Reedy Creek Improvement District. It additionally changed the name of the District to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. Further it restricted the District’s power of eminent domain and removed never-used powers that could have allowed the District to build its own airport or a nuclear plant. The bill flew through the legislature and was signed by the governor, who happily reported: “Today, the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end. There’s a new sheriff in town and accountability will be the order of the day.” If you didn’t know better, you would say he was running for President.

It has been a bit of tit-for-tat since then. DeSantis appointed his hand-picked board members. But in one of the final duly and legally noticed meetings with the existing board, contracts were entered into with Disney which left the new board with very little power thus thwarting much of what DeSantis was hoping to accomplish. The governor was again irritated instructing the new board to “vacate” the previous Disney contracts. Disney in turn has filed a lawsuit against the State of Florida. Phew!! DeSantis now says that the special district enabled the park to unfairly skirt local rules and building codes all these years. Apparently, he was only trying to right that historic wrong.

I apologize for the lengthy background. A couple of salient points gleaned from the background:
• Disney hardly needs me to defend them. They have virtually unlimited resources to bring to a fight and they are not afraid to use them, including in this case their financial standing with members of the opposition.
• Disney and the State of Florida “did a deal” in the mid 1960’s. Was it a good deal? Given how it transformed the state, I think most people would argue that it was a good deal for both parties, one of those hard-to-find win-win things. In any event, both parties sailed along for nearly sixty years thinking that it was okay.
• Part of an ongoing side-deal involves politicians and the company. The company influences politicians and politicians get campaign contributions and some cynics would say, more. And by the way this absolutely included DeSantis.

I spent about half of my career working for local government. Of course, in my world the stakes were much smaller, but I am going to argue that the principles still apply. I don’t care what the facts are in Florida and on what side of the “culture wars’ that seem to dominate all political discourse these days you are on, principles still apply:

• A deal is a deal – there were many times when the city that I worked for was in a contract that we really didn’t like. But we reasoned, if THE GOVERNMENT won’t stand by its word and abide by a legal contract, who in the hell WILL? There were even situations that we felt were NOT in the best interests of our citizens, but the city kept its word.
• Government has power, lots of power. It has to be SO careful in how it exercises that power. Our city attorneys constantly reminded us that we must never be “arbitrary and capricious”. I learned to hate and respect those words.
• Never beat up on another kid just because you can.
• We have this thing in America called the “Bill of Rights”. The first one guarantees the right of free speech.

I have written before that for much of my life I was literally a card-carrying Republican. That was quite a while back. The party left me. They would call me a RINO now. We were the party of LIMITED government, GOOD government, individual rights, capitalism. I still cling to those principles. That is why as a former Republican I say that the arbitrary and capricious nature of what Governor DeSantis and his accomplices in the legislature are attempting to do is so anti-Republican. If the state can use its power to persecute an entity (even one as powerful as Disney) using the machinery of government, that is not LIMITED government, that is government run amok, not LIMITING itself by the honoring of contracts and the rights of its citizens. By the way this would be true even if the private entity had violated a law. There is a process for dealing with that and it doesn’t involve passing NEW laws after the fact. Further this travesty is un-Republican because it tramples on individual rights. No matter what Disney is or has otherwise done, all that they have done in this case is to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to SPEAK, you remember, that Bill of Rights thing. And they are being anti-business, harassing one of the largest economic engines in their state.

When I was still city manager, a citizen approached me. He had been involved with one of our inspectors regarding some sort of building or zoning issue. He told me that he feared that because the city employee had made a mistake and he had been proved correct, that the city would retaliate against him in some other way. That shook me to my most innermost being. I told him that government can NEVER do that. It can never use its power to abuse individuals for no good reason. I gave him my business card and told him that if he ever felt that happening to call me IMMEDIATELY and DIRECTLY. I am so thankful that never happened. Because that would be un-Burnsvillian, un-Republican and most importantly, just like the crap that is going on in Florida right now – UN-AMERICAN. Quit burning up the public’s time and the public’s resources trying to use the machinery of government to enforce your morals. Work on the REAL problems that we have for a change.