The moral arc of Fucking Around is long, but it bends toward Finding Out.
The point is- there are A TON of special tax districts. As pointed out time after time, Disney is not special here.
You win one Internet. I am totally stealing that.
Suit dismissed due to lack of standing. Disney to “‘press forward’ with its case but not specifying how.”
Readable by all without a gift link by the usual methods that shall not be mentioned.
By a trump appointed judge.
Gift link (in case the aforementioned usual methods don’t work):
Shockingly, the prospect of a president that would be eager to punish private businesses for exercising free speech, did not endear Ron DeSantis to GOP voters.
Or maybe it did. But it wasn’t enough to overcome their aversion to his personality.
DeSantis has a personality?
I know I’ve posted this (somewhere) on this site before, but: my very favorite description of Desantis came from Seth Meyers.
In the months since he said it, it hasn’t been bettered.
It’s not quite clear to me what the settlement agreement means but my feeling is that De Santis won?
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4559406-disney-desantis-board-settlement-florida/
I had to read another article or two and I’m still a bit unclear. Back when this started and DeSantis was planning to put his own people on Disney’s board, Disney rewrote it’s bylaws (rules? policies?) to reduce the amount of power the board has. If I understand what just happened, a judge reversed that and the board rules are reverted to how they were in 2020.
But this still seems out of place “Jeff Vahle, the president of Walt Disney World Resort, said the company was pleased a settlement had been reached.”
Is this ruling part of a bigger case? At this point I don’t remember how many layers deep* we are and how many of those layers involve lawsuits.
*Desantis says don’t say gay
Disney wants to say gay
Desantis decides to take over their board
Disney neuters the board.
Desantis sues to un-neuter the board.
Disney un neuters the board.
Is that about where we are?
I believe I floated an idea before, but I’ll float it again. I think Disney should start quietly putting out some feelers looking for any large plots of land in some of the neighboring states. I think a large number of Floridians might not be to thrilled at the thought of losing such a huge tourist attraction.
Here’s CNN’s coverage. Looks like both sides got something: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/business/desantis-disney-fight-reaches-settlement/index.html
If I were Disney, I’d definitely keep that one simmering on the back burner. Seems like a slam dunk—DeSantis put it his book, for Pete’s sake.
It wasn’t Disney’s board of directors, it was the local government authority that was taken over. Imagine if you badmouthed your governor and in turn he replaced your city council with cronies and told them to raise your taxes & utilities and slow walk any future zoning requests, building permits, etc.
Disney tried to make a last minute deal with the old tax authority giving them the right to govern themselves for 30 years. The incoming authority (‘board of tourism’ or something) said that deal is null and void. That is the issue now being settled.
~Max
My read is that DeSantils realized that antagonizing one of the top income streams into the state and sending millions of tourists to California was a bad idea and so told his hand picked board to back off and give Disney what they wants. Disney for its part gets things going back to normal, and can concentrate on more important things.
So DeSanits can claim to his base that he beat Disney, and Disney no longer has to deal with an antagonistic board, and both sides can quit spending millions on lawyers.
Another take on it, more derisive of DeSantis:
Great article and summary. Thanks for posting.