Florida cancels Disneyworld's special tax district

[thewayne]

All because Disney decided to speak out against Florida's "Don't Say Gay" legislation. Which they didn't do until Disney's LGBTQA workforce segment and friends called the company on its position.

Now, this is going to have some very interesting repercussions. The special tax district was enacted in 1967 when Roy Disney started working on Disneyworld. Walt died in December of '66 from complications of lung cancer. The special tax district effectively made Disneyworld its own city with the ability to levy tax, build roads, it was responsible for its own law enforcement, sewage, it could build its own airport and theoretically its own nuclear power plant if it wanted to. And let's face it, Disney had the money.

UPDATE: Disney does not handle law enforcement. They use Florida Highway Patrol for that. Disney Security is about on par with night watchmen, as they describe it. Orange County Sheriff's Dept maintains an office, used mainly for processing shop lifters.

And June 1 next year the special tax district goes away. TAKE THAT, MICKEY! DE SANTIS HAS YOUR NUMBER! And he'll be getting your tax dollars, too!

Or will he?

If Disneyworld is no longer a special tax district, seems to me that the local municipality is now on the hook for providing those municipal services: water, sewer, law enforcement and fire protection/EMS. And has to provide the fire equipment, too, or buy/lease the trucks/equipment from Disney on-going. There is absolutely no way the area municipality has budgeted for that as De Santis is a Republican True Believer and has been slashing taxes, causing reductions in budgets and Rainy Day funds throughout the state.

Disneyworld makes more than enough money to keep all those services well-funded for the area they're responsible for. As a big business, under the Republican paradigm of tax cuts, they shouldn't have to pay a lot as they are one of Florida's largest employer with 80,000+ employees - including all those fire fighters, EMS, police, water/sewage workers, etc. Who are no longer going to be working for Disney. Will the local municipality going to hire all of them, or are they going to contribute to local unemployment numbers?

But my point there is that if standards of service slip, Disneyworld has the right to utterly pack and slam local town council/county board meetings for not providing adequate service. According to the Wikipedia article, Walt wanted to open a theme part in the Eastern U.S. because 5% of Disneyland's visitors were coming from east of the Mississippi even though - at that time - that had 75% of the country's population.

Corporations are people, or so they say. For the most part, Disney stays pretty quiet in the political sphere. Florida just made it very personal for Disney's bottom line. The Mouse can be quite a giant when riled. It's going to be very interesting to see how this plays out over the next election cycle or two.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61179262

Comments

[kaishin108]

It really is going to be interesting how this all pans out. It sounds like it could really backfire on DeSantis and oh how I would love that! ;-)

[thewayne]

I read an article that county property taxes could go up a MINIMUM of 20%!

[kaishin108]

This is going to get crazy! I sure hope DeSantis gets bad publicity and loses support. Maybe that will help him not run for president later.
Is he short sighted or does he just not care?

[thewayne]

Republicans, especially the particularly rabid Trump followers, think they're bullet-proof against bad PR.  Florida, like so many red states, is gerrymandered to a fare-thee-well which keeps them in power.  Remember the referendum the citizens of Florida passed enfranchising released convicts with the right to vote, then the legislature turned around and said "Nah-ah!" and passed a law saying they had to pay back all money owed the courts, without being able to define how much that is?  That's still standing!

[kaishin108]

Oh I remember that about the convicts. What a horrible state.

[thewayne]

Yeah.  Their legislature - entirely Republican controlled - is pretty horrible.

[disneydream06]

We all know I am prejudice when it comes to Disney, so I hope Disney bitch slaps Florida into the next decade.
Hugs, Jon

[kaishin108]

Yes!

[silveradept]

Knowing the Florida governor, if the districts that Disneyland is part of are locally governed by Democrats (or insufficiently Trumpy Republicans), he probably considers dumping all of that local tax increase on their laps as a benefit, since he won't have to provide any additional support for it.

[thewayne]

Interesting point.  I do not know how those two counties lean politically, but I'm sure there's plenty of Trumpy Republicans in them who won't appreciate their property taxes going up 20%.

[silveradept]

There may very well be, but property taxes are always a local issue, so it'll be the local governance that takes the heat for any increases. The state will get to walk away, possibly while whistling Dixie just to get the point across.

[rain_gryphon]

I'm not the least bit sure how you've worked out that taxing WDW is going to raise rates on the surrounding county taxpayers. If the county is merciful and/or foolish, I'd expect no effect. What I'll expect is for the county to hike WDW's rates as high as they think it can survive. They've had that place sitting there for 50 years, after all, raking in the money, but they're unable to tax it. That's the only thing that's changed.

[thewayne]

Disney has been taxing itself and the areas around it and providing the services that those taxes provide.  Net profit to Disney from the taxes, probably about zero.  Hard to say.  As of the legislation taking effect, Disney doesn't have the legal right to charge those taxes, and also no longer has the responsibility to provide those services - the counties do.  They now have to tax Disney.  It changes the tax flow and who has to provide those services AND the costs of providing and maintaining those services.  It's estimated that this could increase property taxes in those counties TWENTY PERCENT to their voters.  They can't just increase taxes on WDW because there's already a tax there, that tax is being transferred.  And if they try to increase it further, they run into the problem of going against Republican ethos of taxing major corporations, especially one that is the largest employer in the state - and many have suggested that Disney pull out of Florida because of this!  Also, it's not easy to increase tax on a single corporation - corporate discrimination?  You'd probably end up increasing it on all theme parks in the state, which would increase all ticket prices, which would drive down tourism which is a lifeblood of Florida's economy.