(TheRedAlertNews.com) – Florida’s Republican Governor, Ron DeSantis, announced a new state bill targeting the Walt Disney Co. after the pro-left company tried to subvert the authority of his newly appointed oversight board.
The DeSantis administration has been taking steps against Disney for over a year after the corporation denounced a state bill to limit discussions of gender and sexuality in elementary schools.
As a result, the state did away with Disney’s privileges and took over the management of its special administrative district, including the Walt Disney World resort.
In a press conference at Lake Buena Vista, DeSantis announced the new draft legislation would undo steps that Disney made to “undermine” the new oversight board for the district, Newsmax reported.
The bill would “formally nullify” a development deal that the leftist corporation made with outgoing board members that obliged DeSantis’s appointees to see it through.
“To do an end-run around the people of Florida shows how arrogant they are,” DeSantis told WFLA’s “Good Morning Orlando” before Monday’s announcement.
Disney’s opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act – dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by mainstream media – was voiced last spring by the company’s then-CEO Bob Chapek.
The second anti-Disney law, which Florida’s GOP-led legislature and administration adopted in February, empowered DeSantis to exert control over the board overseeing municipal services and development in the Disney World district.
Disney’s previous and current CEO, Bob Iger, has described the DeSantis administration’s moves as an “anti-business” and “anti-Florida” retaliation.
Despite the new legislation, the Disney-controlled board members adopted covenants transferring developmental power to the company before stepping down. That effectively left DeSantis’s appointees “largely without real power.”
The measures included blocking the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District from using the name “Disney” or its without company permission.
“What they tried to do is an embarrassment,” a senior Florida administration source told the New York Post on Disney’s efforts to undermine the new oversight board.
“The narrative the left is spinning is that Gov. DeSantis was outmaneuvered. But this is far from over, and he’s going to have the last laugh,” the source added.
Another source said Disney “got used to doing whatever they wanted for far too long,” one source said.
“Not this time… [DeSantis is] not afraid of a fight on this,” the source added.
According to the DeSantis administration, Disney broke the law by restricting legally required public notices of the new deal.
“The Florida Legislature and Gov. DeSantis worked to put Disney on an even playing field. Disney got caught red-handed attempting to undermine Florida’s duly enacted legislation,” said the governor’s communications chief Taryn Fenske.
An attorney for the newly constituted Central Florida Tourism Oversight District has described the actions of the pro-Disney former board members as “shocking.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this. The timing, circumstances, and terms of the (development agreement) showed that the intent… was to circumvent the enabling act of this district and to bind the hands of this board and future boards,” attorney Daniel Langley said on March 29.
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