Making decisions about public goods explicitly as political retaliation for failing to support unrelated positions of the ruling party is authoritarianism. It's *particularly jarringly authoritarian from a faction that is simultaneously arguing that “free speech” is being violated when private actors choose not to actively relay their speech.
I get why people are up in arms about it (the education bill), but it's really bizarre to see people defend special privileges afforded to a corporate giant, as if they are entitled to those privileges.
Removing the tax district means it is illegal for Orange/Osceola Counties to continue charging the extra taxes to Disney to pay for their infrastruture.
If anything, it's a financial sweetheart deal for Florida, not for Disney. The thing Disney gets out of it is being able to maintain their property to the standard of their liking.
With Reedy Creek, Disney doesn't need to worry about whether local politicians will approve expansions or meet the needs of the Walt Disney World complex since the local government is purely serving Disney.
If you take a look at Disneyland in California, Disney is going up against Anaheim and Orange County councils on a pretty routine basis to get new things built.
Sure it's a benefit to Disney, but it's also a benefit to the county taxpayers:
* Disney subsidizes both counties' services and infrastructure by paying property taxes to pay for services/infrastructure, but not consuming them, or contracting for them where needed.
* Allows counties to avoid costly legal and procedural issues when Disney wants to add new features, attractions, or services at their park, or wish to ensure consistency of services provided by the two different counties.
So, what is the crux of your objection?
> Not sure where that idea comes from, but Disney absolutely pays taxes and your claim is false.
It is absolutely true. Stop lying.
> The thing Disney gets out of it is being able to maintain their property to the standard of their liking.
The district, in turn, provides services, including fire response, emergency medical services, water and sewage treatment, and can issue municipal bonds to finance infrastructure projects, which comes with tax advantages which are shared by no other corporation or individual in the nation. The arrangement gives Disney control over municipal services and autonomy when it comes to how the land is used and developed, exempting it from a number of regulations. Again, a privilege enjoyed exclusively by Disney Corp.
> It is absolutely true. Stop lying.
Disney paid $780 million dollars in state and local taxes in FY 2021. Florida law does not allow an entity to be charged a different county property tax rate than other citizens. That's why, if the special district is dissolved, every property owner in Orange and Osceola will be facing a 20% property tax hike: the counties can't simply charge Disney a higher property tax rate to cover the costs of providing Disney infrastructure and services.
> which comes with tax advantages which are shared by no other corporation or individual in the nation.
You mean not shared by any of the 1844 other special districts in Florida, including Sea World, Universal, and other theme parks, HOAs, fire and water districts, law libraries, energy facilities, etc.?
Can you be more explicit about the tax advantages of municipal bonds compared to corporate bonds that you are referring to? You make an overly broad claim, here.
> Again, a privilege enjoyed exclusively by Disney Corp.
And, again, you are wrong. That privilege ("right", really, since it's enshrined in law), is afforded to a number of other entities in Florida (see above). And similar arrangements exist in many, if not most, other states.
They consume no county services that property taxes generally cover (by agreement with the counties). The RCID then levies additional taxes, 2-3x more than the county property tax, on RCID residents which pay for infrastructure and services within the RCID. In some cases, the RCID contracts back to the counties (e.g., the sheriff's office for ~$13 million) to provide services within the RCID.
The result: Disney subsides property taxes in both Orange and Osceola counties, and RCID residents pay 3x more in property taxes than Orange or Osceola counties do, and 2-3 times more than Florida law would allow outside of a special district.
The real benefit that the RCID confers to Disney is control of the consistency and quality of infrastructure and services that they have on their property. And it avoids contention between the counties and Disney in cases of zoning or other civil issues like alcohol licensing, where the two counties may differ, forcing Disney to either have to cater to the most restrictive policies of the two counties, if the policies are compatible, or have different levels of service depending on which county a particular piece of Disney's property sits. Imagine being able to buy alcohol on one side of the park, but not the other, or having great roads on one side of the park, but not the other?
What tax breaks does Disney get? They pay Orange and Osceola property tax, despite receiving no services or infrastructure support from the county (except those that they contract for). Florida law requires that all property taxes be levied equally, so Disney pays the same rate as everyone else in the counties.
The RCID levies additional property taxes on RCID residents (almost all Disney), to pay for the infrastructure it provides to the district. Those amount to ~2-3 times more than the county taxes, and 3 times more than state law would allow the county to charge outside of an independent special district.
The ability for the RCID to charge taxes is a result of its status as an "independent" special district, meaning that it has ad valorem taxation rights (the ability to levy taxes on the residents of it's property beyond state and county taxes). Florida state law requires that any special district that is not completely encompassed with a single municipal boundary be chartered as an independent special district. Since Disney's property spans both Orange and Osceola counties, it is required to be an independent special district. Disney could have requested independent special district status, but in this case it was moot.
If Disney got more special privileges as a result of their speech, nobody would say their rights were violated. If Disney had neutral actions taken as a result of their speech, nobody would say their rights were violated. So the "punishment" aspect is key to making it a violation, but I am making the case that it is not actually punishment, when considering the context of the rest of society.
Yes, if we exclude the thing that people are complaining about, there is no basis for complaint.
Let's suppose the federal government adopted 30 percentage point higher tax rates for everyone who registered as a Republican, donated to a Republican party committee or candidate, or voted in a Republican primary.
Now, particular tax rates are not themselves a matter of right, so by the same logic that there is no basis to complain about the political retaliation against Disney since it is not via something that is a matter of right, Republicans would have no valid basis for complaint.
EDIT>> Oh I think I see now, you are comparing the introduction of a special tax hike on a group of people with removing special privileges from Disney. Those aren't the same at all.
That's the key. I'm arguing that "adverse" doesn't mean "not receiving special unfair treatment."
“Adverse change” means a change in which the resulting condition is worse for the entity involved than the status quo ante.
The justice of either the resulting state or the status quo ante is not relevant to whether the change is adverse.
There is no dispute that:
(1) Florida intends Disney to be worse off because of this change, and
(2) Florida is motivated by Disney's exercise of its First Amendment rights in making this change.
This combination is impermissible regardless of any other context, and is absolutely retaliatory regardless of any other context.
I don't think this is true even of DeSantis himself. This action is very clearly being taken to punish Disney for it's free speech.
> RCID operates in accordance with its Charter and Chapter 189, Florida Statutes, The Uniform Special Districts Accountability Act. Additional information contained in legislation. Click here to view the District Charter: https://www.rcid.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/RCID-Charter...
Further, the first amendment to the US Constitution grants people (and corporations due to rulings like Citizens United, et al.) the right to publicly voice their opinions (good or bad) about the government's actions without fear of government retaliation, except in very narrow cases where that speech is deemed illegal. This is the real crux of the issue: if this legislation was retaliatory--and there are ample indications that it was in the public record--then the legislation violates Disney's first amendment rights.
Whether the corporate rights exist in law for Disney (and other theme parks) is a matter of public record. Whether those rights should be granted at all is a topic worthy of debate, but it actually orthogonal to this particular issue, though they are clearly related.
And the harm to Disney and Orange and Osceola counties is that they must transition all of the infrastructure and services that are operated by the RCID to the counties before the dissolution of the RCID on July 1, 2023. On or after July 1, 2023, Disney can petition the government to re-establish the special district. If approved, then Disney and the counties will have to transition the infrastructure and services back to the newly re-established RCID. The time, effort and cost of those two transitions will be born by Disney and the Orange and Osceola county taxpayers and will like run in the 10s to 100s of millions of dollars, with no business, legislative, or regulatory benefit for the expenditure.
Not being retaliated against government for political speech is, in the US, a right, whether or not the retaliation is via a thing that is itself or right.
This is super important, because most interactions with government are not things that are a matter of individual right outside the rights to not being singled out on an impermissible basis, so if you erase that last bit you enable widespread arbitrary government discrimination.
> I get why people are up in arms about it (the education bill), but it's really bizarre to see people defend special privileges afforded to a corporate giant
Basically no one is defending that, they are defending substantive due process rights, which are what prevent government from making all other rights moot by how they allocate costs and benefits that are not themselves otherwise matters of Constitutional right.
Well, yes, nothing looks like retaliation when you ignore motivations. Motivations define retaliation.
Starting out with selectively ignoring the facts most relevant for assessing whether a thing fits into a particular category is a singularly bad way of assessing whether that is the case.
Disagree. Motivation plays a part, but it is ultimately the action that defines if it was retaliation. The action has to be harmful.
Even your argument upthread is that this is an adverse change that Disney deserves for other reasons than the actual motivation, not that it is not an adverse change.
Put it another way: Imagine a law that said white people get 10% off of every purchase. Now that law is repealed, and white people say: "I'm being harmed!" Are they?
Yes, so (independent of whether the status quo is just or not) the act is:
(1) harmful to Disney, and (2) motivated by Disney’s exercise of its first amendment rights.
> Considering the full context makes it not actual harm.
No, it doesn't. It makes it harmful in a way you believe is warranted for reasons other than the actual motivation.
But the fact that an adverse government action would be warranted for reasons other than the actual motivation does not make taking the same action in retaliation for exercise of Constitutional rights permissible.
Your white privilege example includes no impermissible motivation, and assumes an initial state that would not merely be undesirable policy, but bright line prohibited by the 14th Amendment.
While the Disney special district may be undesirable in some model of fairness, it is not unconstitutional, and the action to remove it does have an impermissible motivation. So the analogy fails on key points.
Obviously, yes, they are worse off after the change.
Yeah, I just don't get the “if I stab you, but you actually deserved it, you aren't actually harmed by it.”
Whether or not that's how you view harm, that's not the understanding of harm that is operative in law. Justification is a separate consideration from harm there, even if you conflate them together.
Puncturing someone's body with an edged weapon is clearly harm, but thanks for totally misrepresenting my position as a last minute jab to an otherwise civil conversation.
So, now your position is that the rule that whether or not there is justification for an act which causes someone to be worse off than previously determines whether that change constitutes harm is only applicable to certain kinds of changes which make the subject worse off, not generally?
Your concept of “harm” becomes less clear the more you say about it.
But it remains the case that it's not the usually definition of harm, or the one applicable to whether it is acceptable, under the Constitution, for government to act in a certain way in response to the exercises of Constitutionally-guaranteed free expression.
Yes. It's not a difficult concept. Children often get upset about rules that are enforced on them, and feel "worse off." Doesn't mean it's harm. Context matters. The world isn't binary.
Also, it's ok to just disagree, since it's clear we disagree on the definition of harm. No need to start constructing strawmen of my position.
Are you saying that losing the benefit of the special district doesn't actually make Disney worse off, and that they are just an immature corporate child lacking the maturity to understand the benefit Daddy DeSantis and Mommy Leg are giving them by taking away their Reedy Creek sucker?
Or is this a complete non-sequitur to distract from the fact that Disney would, in fact, be worse off after the change?
Sure. Slave-owners were also harmed when the slaves were freed. The fact that a harm is just does not make it not harm.
Put another way, would you really claim that someone put in prison for assaulting someone was not harmed? In most cases it's going to be pretty clear they were, yet it can still be just for the sake of protecting others.
>Put another way, would you really claim that someone put in prison for assaulting someone was not harmed?
How is that the same? In my example, I was removing an exclusive and special benefit. I don't see how putting someone in prison is removing an exclusive and special benefit, unless your view is that the default state is everyone should be imprisoned.
Well, let's actually try to apply your scenario and actually make it analogous to the Disney scenario for a moment. Imagine said law exists. Now imagine "Joe" speaks vocally against a law proposed by the "FiFi" party, which currently happens to hold the majority in the legislature and executive branch office. Now the "FiFi" party is suddenly pushing to remove the discount from "Joe" and no one else.
THAT is what's happening here. Disney is hardly the only business which has negotiated preferential treatment. Stadiums and factories are the two most common examples, but there are plenty of examples of States including Florida providing tax breaks and other special treatments to a variety of businesses. But now it seems you can only negotiate with them if you tow the party line. Disagree and any special treatment you've negotiated will be revoked, while everyone who stayed silent gets to keep theirs.
Now, is "Joe" harmed by losing his discount while everyone else gets to keep theirs? Can you really argue that the above isn't the government suppressing free speech?
Are you making the case that it's very common, and so it's not special nor unfair? I am very skeptical that more than %0.001 of businesses (1 in 100,000) benefit from these special government privileges. Especially if you consider all people, since corporations are legally people. It smells like crony capitalist corruption to me...far from normal, and very unfair to everyone else. Shouldn't be happening. Take it all away, I don't care what the motivation is, because to me, it's not harm to remove corruption.
Usually these will be around tax breaks but also special water rights, rights to self govern certain things, rights to use public land, exemptions from certain laws, etc. Usually the justification is that it benefits the local economy exactly the same as the justification for Disney's. Yet somehow here Disney is the only one being targeted. Apparently you are allowed to negotiate these things, but the government will renege on it's agreements if you later dare to speak against them.
If Florida was pushing to kill ALL of these arrangements it would be a non-issue (or rather a very different issue). Instead they are targeting only Disney, for daring to speak against their party line, in a clear attempt to silence their speech. No amount of trying to re-frame the issue changes that.
I agree, if Florida attempted to kill all of the special arrangements, it would definitely appear less biased to people (although impractical, it could still be purely political cover). If you're making the case that targeting Disney's special privileges vs the other company's special privileges is what makes it unfair, I could get behind that more than other arguments that I've seen. But my response to that would be to expand the removal of these privileges. Since that is far less likely to happen, I'm comfortable with using politically motivated reasons (of any side, I don't care who does it and why) to accomplish it.
I cannot begin to fathom this position. Your describing "you can negotiate special privileges if you have enough influence, but only if you never speak against me" as less corrupt than "you can negotiate special privileges if you have enough influence".
Retaliation is about the why, not the what. Retaliation is me doing B because of A.
def: Retaliation: The act of retaliating, or of returning like for like; retribution; now, specifically, the return of evil for evil
In this case, it's about Disney acting in a way that pols don't like. "But here’s the issue, when my 14-year-old or my 10-year-old ask for special privileges? They behave! And they don’t expect those special privileges if they act like jerks. So Disney is learning that they are a guest in this state." - FL Rep Randy Fine
No, and you're twisting what you know retaliation to be, to pretend that is merely "cause and effect." That's very deceptive, because I think you know that it doesn't make much sense to say "He gave me a nice gift, so I retaliated with my own nice gift."
intransitive verb
to return like for like
especially: to get revenge
transitive verb to repay in kind retaliate an injury
Words have dictionary definitions, legal definitions, and connotations (note: the especially). Your usage above is consistent with both the dictionary and legal definitions of retaliate, but would be confusing to most English speakers because of the connotations.
The structure of the law reinforces the retaliatory nature of the legislation: the law goes into effect immediately and dissolves the 6 special districts a year from now. The 6 special districts may petition the government to re-establish their special districts after they have been dissolved. This places a massive and unique burden on Disney since Disney and the two counties that it's property spans (Orange and Osceola), must take on an enormous amount of work and expense, to transition infrastructure and services to the counties before the special district is dissolved on July 1, 2023. Then, if the government grants the petition to re-establish the RCID, the counties and Disney will have to unwind all that work to transition the infrastructure and services from the counties back to the RCID. That wasted transition work will cost both Disney and the two counties' taxpayers 10s or even 100s of millions of dollars, and will have served no rational legislative or business purpose.
If the goal of the bill was to simply to require the re-establishment of the 6 special districts that were not re-established since the update to the state constitution, then the bill should have allowed the special districts to petition for re-establishment any time starting now, before dissolution, rather than requiring the special districts to dissolve before they can petition for re-establishment.
And I bet that Disney's petition to re-establish the district will not be passed, if it is passed at all, at the same pace as the law to strip them of the special district rights in the first place. The SB-4C bill was submitted, passed with no debate in either House or Senate, and no public comment, and signed into law--including a change to the special session rules that allowed it to be considered and passed--all in the span of 96 hours. Most bills take weeks or months--not just 4 days--and go through substantial debate and public comment periods to get through that process.
Politicians have explicitly stated that they are punishing Disney for criticizing a law.
There is no gray area here.
Disney's "special rights" are not all that special or uncommon in Florida. There are 1844 active special districts in Florida, 76 of which have ad valorem taxation rights. Other theme parks in Florida, such as Sea World and Universal, also have special districts to manage their properties.
The definition of a special district enshrines into law specific rights for the owner(s) of the special district, meaning that those are, in fact, rights, not just privileges to be withdrawn at a whim. And Florida specifically pledged to honor those rights both by writing the law that established the RCID, and further committing to not dissolve the district unless all bond debts were paid--the separate law that is referenced in the original article.
I would encourage you to read through the Florida Special District web page: https://floridajobs.org/community-planning-and-development/s...
If you want to argue against special districts existing at all, that's fair. But to argue that Disney shouldn't have one, but the rest of the special districts, including those of Disney's competitors, are acceptable is not a good-faith argument.
I can both dislike Disney and believe this move was unconstitutional at the same time.
It is strange that the entirely of "the left" takes the blame for private actions taken by business, which is then used as some strange "well they started it" reaction by Republican lawmakers to do a much more egregious version of exactly what they repeatedly claim they are against.
An honest call for freedom of speech would defend it against all censorship, public and private.
Indeed, between the two, I find censorship by private "oligarchs" more threatening. Public officials come and go, but the oligarchs remain.
(Edit in response to Volundr: We're not talking about small magazines about Harleys here. Someone who has billions of users and power that rivals governments and changes the outcome of elections must be prevented from abusing that power.)
Edit in response to below: The courts will enforce the law without any input from us. We can only wait and see what they do, if anything. So I'm not discussing that, I'm discussing the hypocrisy in advocating for the principle only when it suits you.
Second edit: It's possible that people simply have different interpretations of the principle, but if that was the case, I'd expect to see a lot more objections to schools that force mandatory ideology on their students, failing them if they disagree; more objections to Canada and European countries when they punish people for their expression; and fewer concerns about Musk taking over Twitter.
What I see instead is people who only call for free speech to defend speech they agree with. Which, as I said before, isn't free speech at all.
Maybe the difference is that not everyone agrees with your expansive definition of the principle of free speech. So what appears to you as advocating for the principle only when it suits your opponents, is simply that not everyone agrees with your particular take on the principle itself.
Its fairly easy to support the interpretation of free speech where the state cannot use its expansive power to punish people for their expression. A forceful (via law) application of this principle to private entities would impact their rights in other ways (such as free association) so it isn't surprising that fewer people agree with this more extreme version of the principle.
Only, you're the one who has defined "the principle" in your own terms. I prefer to read "the Constitution." The position that I defend is the one backed by the Constitution. You can portray that as flip-flopping every time I go from defending a company's right to curate content that it broadcasts to attacking government attempts to enforce religious beliefs through censorship and legislative retaliation to speech, but my position is unwavering.
I cannot disagree with this statement more. What speech you choose to publish and not is a vital part of free speech. If I publish a motorcycle newsletter, and choose to publish a letter to the editor about why Harley's are great, and don't publish another about why Harley's suck that is part of my protected speech. It arguably makes my magazine worse, but that's for my readers to decide. Perhaps they are tired of reading endless articles ragging on Harley's and are pleased to have a publication where they can escape it.
What I do think is that this is the first major case of a fascist pushing the limits of the first amendment. The revocation of the special status was explicitly a direct consequence of Disney's protected speech.
I also believe that corporations should not govern. I would support revoking this district for basically any other reason. But that this targeted punishment due to the content of speech is undeniable, both because of desantis' statements and because The Villages, another special district that is very conservative did not have its status revoked.
If you talk to literal fascists they don't like corporate personhood either.
That's the legal notion that corporations have the same rights as real people, but the special district would still be objectionable if a real person had been allowed to set up their own private local government.
Free speech
Free press
Freedom of association
Freedom of religion
Non-establishment of religion
If a state had such a law would be pretty clearly unconstitutional ab initio.
> If it was being repealed for some politically motivated reason, and white people said "I am being harmed!" would you agree with them?
Assuming the law not only existed on the books but was enforced by the state prior to the repeal, yes, they would obviously be being harmed for an unconstitutional purpose in violation of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
(If any remedy was available, it wouldn't involve preserving the policy, because that policy is a violation of other people's Constitutional rights, but since we haven't been discussing remedies in the Florida case and no one has argued that the special district exceeds Florida’s Constitutional power, that aspect of the hypothetical is not relevant to the discussion.)
I'm not sure the point you are trying to make, but, you are not currently making a good argument to defend it.
The smoking gun would be a leaked text from De Santis saying "We'll get the woke bastards. We'll take away their special district." But I don't think any evidence has emerged yet showing that was indeed his motivation.
Having said that, it was voted through by Florida lawmakers; it would only take a handful of loudmouth politicians saying to camera "See? We're winning the war on woke at Disney!" for a plausible case to start emerging.
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/15172454664...
However, even ignoring that, your premise is still fundamentally flawed: Every citizen has rights afforded to them via the first amendment to representation and to redress the government for grievances, regardless of how much they pay in taxes. And corporations have some status as a person, so they share those same rights.
I agree that corporations sometimes don't pay their fair share of taxes. However, that does not seem to be the case with Disney, at least in this particular instance. And it's actually a bad-faith deflection from the real issue of the violation of Disney's first amendment rights against government retaliation for voicing opposition to the "Parental Rights in Education" bill (now law).
Because 1844 other special districts exist in Florida, including Sea World, Universal, and other theme parks, HOAs, fire districts, water districts, law libraries, development holdings, etc. So Disney does not have rights that nobody else has, and those rights exist to allow those entities to have control over their property to avoid unnecessary, costly, and unproductive conflicts with county rules.
Special priviledges are hardly limited to Disney.