CV NEWS FEED // According to a recent audit of Walt Disney World’s special taxing district, the media and entertainment conglomerate dominated the local government of a sizeable swath of central Florida.
The report characterized The Walt Disney Company’s (“Disney”) operation as a “bait and switch” operation and “a mousetrap.”
In 1967, Florida Gov. Claude Kirk signed the Reedy Creek Improvement Act into law. The agreement cemented the almost-40 square miles surrounding Disney’s then-planned Florida theme park as an autonomous local government, dubbed the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID).
In April of last year, Florida’s current Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill repealing the 55-year-old legislation and ordering the dissolution of the RCID. The new legislation came shortly after Disney openly embraced far-left policies and publicly campaigned against Florida’s successful effort to promote parental rights in education.
The Daily Wire reported Monday that the audit of RCID “found that Disney seized complete control of the government entity, and used the structure to establish itself as one of the world’s largest corporations.”
The audit stated that the Reedy Creek Improvement Act “facilitated the most egregious exhibition of corporate cronyism in modern American history.”
“[Disney] clinched near-total governing authority over the special district,” it continued:
That authority was so unchecked that Disney attained the power to, among other exceptional privileges, create and direct not just its own fire and police departments, but also, if it chose, construct a nuclear power plant.
As the years passed, the true nature of the deal became increasingly clear.
Reedy Creek was allegedly a “partnership,” an equal relationship between a private company and the State of Florida and its citizens. In reality, it was neither in form nor function. Reedy Creek was simply a creature of Disney. Indeed, the city Disney said it planned to build never came to pass, and to this day, Disney’s special district is essentially void of individual residents.
The audit likened RCID to “an experimental absolute monarchy,” albeit one “within the borders of the State of Florida, and, accordingly, the United States—one that strikingly resembled, without exaggeration, a kingdom of yore.”
Disney sold the RCID as one thing in the mid 1960s, but there was deception behind the pitch and sale. The company promised, for example, affordable housing, transportation, and other social and community services. Today, 100,000 people commute into the District to work for Disney. Yet under Disney’s control, the RCID built no workforce housing or schools and did not develop any public services directed at anyone but Disney tourists.
“The RCID was a mousetrap,” the report emphasized. “Disney dangled savory cheese in front of the Florida Legislature and the people of Orlando, but quickly abandoned its city-building pretense.”
The audit also indicated that Disney ran the RCID via “effectively purchasing loyalty” from local officials:
As comprehensively documented within, for years, the company treated district employees like Disney employees by, for instance, providing complimentary annual passes and steep discounts—benefits and perks that were akin to bribes. Not surprisingly then, the District’s employees believed that it was their job to prioritize the interests of Disney.
“The RCID provided all employees and certain other ‘VIP’ individuals and retirees with annual passes to the Disney theme parks,” the auditors stated later on in the 72-page report:
Each RCID employee was entitled to receive a Complimentary Ticket for him or herself, which could only be used by the RCID employee, as well as one Complimentary Ticket for his or her spouse (if any), which ticket could be used only by the employee’s spouse. Each RCID employee also received at least three additional Complimentary Tickets, or the number of Complimentary Tickets equal to the number of dependents in the employee’s household if greater than 3.
“As a whole, the RCID represented a stunning deviation from the good governance standards of the State of Florida and other localities throughout the nation,” the audit concluded. “Without real checks and balances, internal dissent and public decision-making was shut down and competition was likely stifled, if not eliminated.”
“The audit’s findings will likely be seen as a vindication of DeSantis,” The Daily Wire noted.
The Daily Signal elaborated: “Until Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Feb. 27 abolishing the Reedy Creek district, Disney heavily influenced the local government to its advantage.”
Also according to The Daily Signal, the former RCID is now known as the “Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, which aims to root out what critics see as Disney’s corrupt hold over the local government.”
