As Caroline notes:
Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation Friday that strips Disney of its 50-year-old “independent special district” status in retaliation for criticizing Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law.
The law dissolves the Reedy Creek Improvement District, an autonomous area created in 1967 to accommodate the massive Disney World complex near Orlando. The independent status grants Disney the privilege of creating its own regulations, building codes, and other municipal services within the zone. The arrangement has also shielded Disney from significant tax burden.
Specifically, the legislation holds that Disney’s independent special district will be deemed to have been dissolved on June 1st of next year, unless the law in question is repealed or, having gone into effect, the district is reestablished by the legislature.
Is this legal? Yes, probably. The 1968 Florida Constitution holds that:
SECTION 4. Transfer of powers.—By law or by resolution of the governing bodies of each of the governments affected, any function or power of a county, municipality or special district may be transferred to or contracted to be performed by another county, municipality or special district, after approval by vote of the electors of the transferor and approval by vote of the electors of the transferee, or as otherwise provided by law.
That “as otherwise provided by law” line almost certainly allows the legislature to make changes to special districts without a “vote of the electors of the transferor and approval by vote of the electors of the transferee.”
The statutes in this area are generally stricter than the constitution requires. Per 189.072(2)(a):
(a) In order for the Legislature to dissolve an active independent special district created and operating pursuant to a special act, the special act dissolving the active independent special district must be approved by a majority of the resident electors of the district or, for districts in which a majority of governing body members are elected by landowners, a majority of the landowners voting in the same manner by which the independent special district’s governing body is elected. If a local general-purpose government passes an ordinance or resolution in support of the dissolution, the local general-purpose government must pay any expenses associated with the referendum required under this paragraph.
Or, put another way: Under 189.072(2)(a), Disney gets a vote.
Or, rather, Disney got a vote, because the law that Governor DeSantis signed today waves all that away with a peremptory “notwithstanding” clause:
Notwithstanding s. 189.072(2), any independent special district established by a special act prior to the date of ratification of the Florida Constitution on November 5, 1968, and which was not reestablished, re-ratified, or otherwise reconstituted by a special act or general law after November 5, 1968, is dissolved effective June 1, 2023. An independent special district affected by this subsection may be reestablished on or after June 1, 2023, pursuant to the requirements and limitations of this chapter.
In a Machiavellian sense, this construction is quite clever. By including special districts that were established “prior to the date of ratification of the Florida Constitution on November 5, 1968, and which was not reestablished, re-ratified, or otherwise reconstituted by a special act or general law after November 5, 1968,” the legislature has made the provision look superficially neutral. It’s not neutral, of course — quite obviously, DeSantis and the legislature chose that date and those caveats because Disney’s special district was granted in 1967 — but to the uninitiated and the willful it looks as if it could be, and, in our contemporary politics, that’s all that really matters.
Still, while the law may well survive a court challenge, it could end up doing some damage to Florida among prospective investors. In 2015, the Florida legislature reconfirmed that the abolition of special districts such as Disney’s requires buy-in from both parties. In 2022, without any debate or consideration, it summarily changed those rules so that it could inflict some damage on the state’s largest employer. Legally, that’s probably fine. But it’s no way to run a railroad, and that Disney has behaved badly here (it has) does not change that.