Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) provided an update Monday on the state’s ongoing battle with Disney, saying the legislature is working on a measure to effectively revoke Disney’s backdoor agreements, which the Reedy Creek Improvement District’s board of supervisors stealthily put in place prior to the DeSantis-approved board coming to power.
DeSantis signed legislation officially ending Disney’s self-governing status in February, nearly a year after the battle over the Parental Rights in Education bill, which the woke company vowed to fight against. Disney went full groomer against the bill, which in part prevented classroom discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity for children in kindergarten through third grade.
“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,” Disney said in March 2022:
In February 2023, DeSantis announced new members of the supervisory board, now called the Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board. They include attorney Martin Garcia of Tampa, Seminole County attorney Michael Sasso, Clearwater attorney Brian Aungst, Sarasota County School Board member Bridget Ziegler, and The Gathering USA CEO Ron Peri.
However, they quickly hit a major snag after discovering that the previous board snuck through a 30-year development agreement in early February, tying the hands of the newly established board. At the time, DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske said an initial review suggested that “these agreements may have significant legal infirmities that would render the contracts void as a matter of law.”
“The Executive Office of the Governor is aware of Disney’s last-ditch efforts to execute contracts just before ratifying the new law that transfers rights and authorities from the former Reedy Creek Improvement District to Disney,” she stated.
“An initial review suggests these agreements may have significant legal infirmities that would render the contracts void as a matter of law,” she said. “We are pleased the new Governor-appointed board retained multiple financial and legal firms to conduct audits and investigate Disney’s past behavior.”
DeSantis provided an update on Monday, explaining that these previous agreements snuck through by the board violated the will of the voters:
This was something that was litigated. This is something that the voters understood. And not only did the legislature come back in ways that vindicated our position; we won big and you know, we did better in Central Florida [than] Republicans [have] done in a long time, including areas that have a lot of employees of Disney, like Osceola County. So the reality is, clearly that’s [the] direction we were going to go.
He explained that the previous board did not care and sought to enact those develop agreements that would “essentially render everything that we did null and void and put them in control in perpetuity for this.”
“That’s not going to work. That’s not gonna fly,” DeSantis said, explaining that the agreements “have a plethora of legal infirmities that render them void anyways.”
“And I think that the board, our state board, that meets again on Wednesday, I think that they will find as such, and I fully expect them to take the board out of those agreements,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis said the legislature is also taking action, as a section of the Florida Statutes “provides the legislature with the authority to revoke development agreements in this exact type of instance.”
“And so I’ve worked with both leaders of the House and Senate. There is a bill that will be put out in the Florida legislature that will make sure that the agreements purported to be entered into by Disney are revoked and the people’s will is established and is upheld,
DeSantis announced.
The governor expressed optimism on the outlook of his administration’s ongoing battle with Disney:
We’re also working with the legislature. We expect the legislature to provide a legislative amendment provision. You know, this monorail is exempt. They exempted the monorail from any safety standards or inspections. So they’re going to go and make sure that the monorail is subject to oversight just like everything else would be in the state of Florida.