When the state of Florida passed the Reedy Creek Improvement Act it created a special district to oversee the land Walt Disney purchased for his Disney World project. For more than 50 years the resort and the district worked well together, but now the chairman of the board that recently took over is taking Walt Disney World to task, criticizing the company’s lawsuits against the board and calling the previous relationship “corporate cronyism.”
Disney World and the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District are currently battling in both state and federal court, but recently Disney World made the decision to drop most of their federal complaints against the board. While Disney has said it did this simply because it is also making the same arguments in state court and didn’t need to do so twice, CFTOD Chairman Martin Garcia said in a prepared statement during the CFTOD meeting last night (via BlogMickey) that the filing was simply a “publicity stunt” and he blasted the old board and its relationship with Walt Disney World, saying in part…
Politely, the Reedy Creek Improvement District could have been described as a “public-private partnership.” In reality, in terms of scope and scale, it became one of the greatest examples of corporate cronyism in modern American history.
Garcia’s full statement is quite the scathing rebuke of Disney, claiming that Disney’s decision to drop some of its claims is proof that Disney knew the claims were invalid, even though the same claims are still going to be dealt with in state court. Disney World only recently brought a counter lawsuit in state court against the CFTOD, arguing that since the new board is not legally distinct from the old board, they should abide by the land deal that Reedy Creek made with Disney World shortly before the new board took over.
All this is part of a larger battle between Walt Disney World and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. After the Walt Disney Company publicly came out against the state’s Parental Rights in Education Act, the Governor, and the legislature began passing multiple laws that drastically changed the way Disney World’s special district functioned. The board became the CFTOD and its members were chosen by DeSantis, rather than being residents of the district as previously required. Since then, the board has had a much more hostile relationship with the resort. In addition to suing Disney World over the land use deal, it has stripped Annual Passes from the benefits package for district employees.
While Disney World dropped several of its claims in the federal lawsuit, which names both Governor DeSantis and the members of the CFTOD, its primary claim, that the government is retaliating against Disney, in violation of its First Amendment rights, is still active. The rest of the claims will simply be dealt with in state court. Exactly when these cases will go before a court is a question that has yet to be answered.