The Florida Senate passed legislation late Wednesday that would get rid of a development agreement between Walt Disney World and its special district signed before the district’s board was replaced with government appointees, further escalating Florida Republicans’ feud with Disney despite the company filing a lawsuit over those attacks hours earlier.Copyright 2019 The Associated Press.
The bill, which was amended to specifically address the Disney agreement, would also give boards four months to review development agreements after taking office and decide if they should be adopted. Disney and the former board of the Reedy Creek Improvement District that oversees Walt Disney World—whose members were elected by Disney—enacted a developmentthat gives Disney broad authority over the district, empowering it to build on the land without the special district’s approval and have sole approval of buildings within the district even if they’re not Disney-owned.
The agreement was passed just before Florida lawmakers overhauled the laws governing Reedy Creek so that the board would now be appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis , and the DeSantis-appointed board members discovered the development agreement soon after taking office, expressing outrage that it rendered them essentially powerless.to revoke the agreement, prompting Disney to file a lawsuit in federal court against the governor and the special district board members minutes later.
The lawsuit argues the state’s attacks on Disney—which began because the company opposed the state’s law known as “Don’t Say Gay”—violate its First Amendment rights, calling the board’s vote the “last strike” in the state’s war against the company.The bill will now go to the Florida House, which is also controlled by Republicans and is likely to pass it.