TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will soon take control of Walt Disney World’s self-governing district after Senate Republicans approved a bill on Friday punishing the company through opposition to the law critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”
The legislation, which is currently awaiting the governor’s signature, would require DeSantis to appoint a five-member board to oversee district government services providing corporate properties in Florida.
The Disney bill’s vote ends a special legislative session focused on the conservative agenda of a governor who has used national political tensions to become a national GOP star and potential White House contender.
The session itself, which was quickly called and ended, also signaled the willingness of DeSantis to use the supermajority of the Republicans in the state house to achieve political goals, a strategy that will continue in the coming months as he builds to the presidential candidacy he wants.
The takeover of the Disney district began last year when Disney publicly opposed “Don’t Talk Gay,” which bans instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and lessons it deems age-inappropriate.
DeSantis moved to punish the company, directing lawmakers to dissolve the district during a special legislative session in April, beginning a closely watched restructuring process.
Last week, Republican leaders of the House and Senate, in conjunction with the governor, ordered lawmakers back into another special session to complete the state takeover of the district.
“This all seems to be retaliation by the governor for Disney voicing support for the LGBTQ community,” Democratic Senator Linda Stewart said on Friday before the Bill’s passage.
The measure also changes the district’s name from the Reedy Creek Improvement District to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District and subjects it to multiple layers of state oversight. Board members are currently named through entities controlled by Disney.
The bill leaves the district and its financial capabilities and debt obligations intact, addressing the main problems surrounding government. It also bars those who have worked or contracted with the amusement park in the past three years from serving on the district’s new governing board.
Having a separate government allows the district to issue bonds and provide zoning, fire protection, utilities and infrastructure services on its land. Republican critics in the district say it offers commercial advantages unavailable to others.
“This bill takes the old district and modernizes it and updates it,” said Republican Rep. Fred Hawkins, the bill’s sponsor. “It takes away rights that no company should be able to build or have an unfair competitive advantage over its competitors.”
The formation of the district was instrumental in the company’s decision to build near Orlando in the 1960s.
Disney officials have told the state that they plan to build a futuristic city that will include a transit system and urban planning innovations, so the company needs autonomy to build and decide how to use the land. The futuristic city never materialized and instead became the second theme park to open in 1982.
Separately on Friday, Republicans in the House gave final passage to two bills that amount to technical fixes for key DeSantis initiatives on immigration and voter fraud. The proposal now moves to the governor’s office to be signed into law.
One bill is intended to eliminate legal challenges to the governor’s migrant relocation program, which began last year when DeSantis used taxpayer dollars to fly a group of South American migrants from Texas to the liberal island resort enclave of Martha’s Vineyard.
The trip drew legal questions because the administration paid for the flight using money intended to remove migrants from Florida, not migrants from other states.
The law creates a special program in the governor’s office on the relocation of migrants and specifies that future flights can move migrants from anywhere in the US. presidential offer.
Republicans have repeatedly said the bill would help migrants by bringing them to sanctuary cities and states, while Democrats have slammed the program as a political stunt intended to serve the governor’s political ambitions.
Another proposal intended to strengthen the powers of prosecutors from the gubernatorial election police unit, clarifying in state law that state prosecutors have the authority to prosecute election crimes in federal and state races.
“This guarantees the fraud will be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, as it should,” said Republican Rep. Juan Alfonso Fernandez-Barquin.
Several cases related to the election police unit have been dismissed by judges who said the country’s prosecutors lacked the authority to prosecute.
DeSantis pushed lawmakers to create an election police unit last year to address Republican concerns about voter fraud, which has grown in conservative circles after former President Donald Trump’s false claims that his re-election was stolen.
The unit, located in the state governor’s department, examines allegations of fraud and conducts preliminary investigations, with a special group of state police investigating violations.
Democrats say the units are meant to deter people from voting and are unnecessary because local prosecutors can investigate and charge voter fraud.
“This is a tactic to scare and kill voters, plain and simple,” said Rep. Dianne Hart, Democrat.
DeSantis is expected to sign the bill into law. Lawmakers will return to Tallahassee in early March for the regular legislative session, where they will approve other DeSantis priorities on guns, education, capital punishment and abortion.