Spineless Florida lawmakers rushed to aid a vengeful DeSantis — and made a mess of it | Editorial

Disney’s clapback to Gov. Ron DeSantis came in a note to investors on April 21, one day after lawmakers voted to punish the company for having the gall to oppose Florida’s “Don’t say gay” bill.

It turns out that a phrase deep in the law that created the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a 56-year-old special taxing district that independently governs Disney, indicates the state actually can’t dissolve the district until its debt is paid off. That’s about $1 billion, according to the credit rating agency Fitch Ratings.

The statement, posted on the website of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, quotes the Florida statute that created the district, noting that it says, in part, that the “State of Florida pledges . . . it will not limit or alter the rights of the District . . . until all such bonds together with interest thereon . . . are fully met and discharged.”

Disney said in the note that it would “explore its options while continuing its present operations.” That sounds like business as usual to us.

This is what happens when lawmakers rush into decisions. There was no time to fully explore the issue or consider its ramifications of the legislation. Three days after the bill was filed, the House passed it, 70-38, and sent the bill to the governor. Lawmakers are elected to represent us but how much conversation could they have had with constituents in a handful of days?

We don’t know if this will turn out to require another piece of legislation or will spark a lawsuit. One or both seem likely. But we do know this: In either case, we’re the ones who have to pay for the Legislature’s unseemly haste to do what their leader wanted and use his public office to punish Disney.

If you’re concerned about inflation and the lack of affordable housing, remember that your hard-earned money that you give the government for taxes will be used to unwind the mess that lawmakers created simply because they were too weak to stand up to the governor and his desire for revenge.

Plus, it just looks sloppy. These are people with the power to change laws, yet they didn’t notice this? Maybe if they’d spent any time in actual discussion of the issue, they’d have known. Instead, the Republicans running things in Tallahassee just handed the control to the governor and walked away from their obligation — their duty — to analyze the proposed change in the law and consider it clearly. There wasn’t any time for our elected officials to make a case to the public as to why the Reedy Creek district should be dissolved.

The worst part is that the taxing district, which has been around since 1967 and encompasses two cities, may well be an outdated concept. The district functions much like a government, with the ability to issue tax-free bonds, provide police and fire service and, notably, build its own nuclear power plant, something DeSantis seized on as shocking. Most people would probably agree that Disney shouldn’t be able to build a nuclear power plant of its own.

We’ve said it before: The special session was too rushed. DeSantis originally called it to pass congressional districts, a map he forced lawmakers to accept, and then he expanded it to include the measure on Disney. Disney’s big sin: publicly opposing the the “Parental Rights in Education” law, also known as the “Don’t say gay” bill, and then pausing its political campaign contributions in Florida.

Floridians should have been able to consider and discuss Disney’s special taxing district. But the will of the people was sidelined in the small-minded, mean-spirited pursuit of retribution. And it was the governor, aided by weak-willed legislators, who did that to all of us.

This story was originally published April 27, 2022 at 4:41 PM.