DeSantis Ratchets Up His Run Against DIsney

[Sol Rosenberg]

When did not being a bigoted, homophobic asshole get you called "woke"  You fucktards on the right are ridiculous. 

It's downright threatening! 

LBJ had this shit pinned down loooooong ago,. but it doesn't just apply to black people. There will always be a marginalized group to which hucksters can point to make piles of dung feel contentedly superior to someone, anyone, else. 

 

[Blue Crab]

And give him a per diem and he'll kill for ya if needed. --BC

 

[Saorsa]

This is all very confusing.

I thought giving big corporations special concessions and tax breaks was bad.

 

[badlatitude]

This is all very confusing.

I thought giving big corporations special concessions and tax breaks was bad.

Tell it to DeSantis.

 

[Raz'r]

This is all very confusing.

I thought giving big corporations special concessions and tax breaks was bad.

A transfer of $1B in debt from Disney to local gov't, and the cost of roads/fire/etc to now be shared with the local counties is not that?

 

[Not for nothing]

This is all very confusing.

I thought giving big corporations special concessions and tax breaks was bad.

"follow the money fuck the people"

Here’s the corrupt part of what Ron DeSantis is doing with Disney (msn.com)

, if we are to believe the lieutenant governor: Disney is being offered a special tax break if it will refrain from opposing Republican legislation.

 

[Steam Flyer]

This is all very confusing.

I thought giving big corporations special concessions and tax breaks was bad.

"follow the money fuck the people"

Here’s the corrupt part of what Ron DeSantis is doing with Disney (msn.com)

, if we are to believe the lieutenant governor: Disney is being offered a special tax break if it will refrain from opposing Republican legislation.

Now all they need to do is make threats to the Disney board.

- DSK

 

[Not for nothing]

Now all they need to do is make threats to the Disney board.

- DSK

Thought of the day, Big companies have always made deal with the states to bring in jobs and taxes, if the state can take away it's rights, What right's does any property/home owner have? Oh you didn't vote for me, so your evicted?

 

[Steam Flyer]

Now all they need to do is make threats to the Disney board.

Thought of the day, Big companies have always made deal with the states to bring in jobs and taxes, if the state can take away it's rights, What right's does any property/home owner have? Oh you didn't vote for me, so your evicted?

Zackly

Welcome to Cuba under Batista

- DSK

 

[fishingbobber]

This is the actual bill. It is only 7 pages . I wouldn't discuss it with someone who hasn't taken the time to read the actual law we are discussing. ...https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/er/PDF

 

[Olsonist]

https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/the-contractual-impossibility-of-unwinding-disneys-reedy-creek

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

View attachment 507020

https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/the-contractual-impossibility-of-unwinding-disneys-reedy-creek

From Article I, Fla. Const.: SECTION 10. [SIZE=10pt]Prohibited laws.[/SIZE][SIZE=10pt]—[/SIZE][SIZE=10pt]No bill of attainder, ex post facto law or law impairing the obligation of contracts shall be passed.[/SIZE]

 

[Olsonist]

This seems to me ripe for abuse but then everything seems ripe for abuse these days.

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

This seems to me ripe for abuse but then everything seems ripe for abuse these days.

They’ll never do anything to unwind RCID, unless Disney wants them to do it.  Disney would love to wipe some money off of their liabilities side of the ledger but having total control has its benefits. It doesn’t take effect for over a year. They’ll kill it in the next session when the checks start flowing into campaign accounts again. 

 

[hobie1616]

They’ll never do anything to unwind RCID, unless Disney wants them to do it.  Disney would love to wipe some money off of their liabilities side of the ledger but having total control has its benefits. It doesn’t take effect for over a year. They’ll kill it in the next session when the checks start flowing into campaign accounts again. 

Disney corporation has always appeared to be a pretty smart organization.  It's a safe bet that they have had a plan for years to deal with the potential loss of RCID.  The financial impacts on local counties and tax payers are coming from somewhere.  Disney feeding the info to the press?

 

[hobie1616]

Latest PR battle news.

Reedy Creek reassuring investors after DeSantis signs law dissolving special district

“My main concern as the mayor of Orange County is unintended consequences and costs,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said.

Demings said a company that pays taxes and maintains a property larger than the city of Apopka takes an enormous burden off the backs of taxpayers. Not to mention more than a billion dollars in bond debt. The mayor said dissolving Reedy Creek and absorbing that Disney property would likely strain Orange and Osceola county budgets.

“A lot is undetermined at this point. What I say to everyone is, don't panic at this time. You know, let's wait on all of the details, and we'll just have to see how this all shakes itself out,” Demings said.

The fiscal impact analysis from the state is unclear. It reads, "residents and businesses may experience a change in services previously provided by the special district and related assessments and taxes imposed."

Disney Muni Bonds Are a Bargain After DeSantis Blow, Analysts Says

Investors should buy more municipal bonds sold by the embattled Walt Disney Co.’s special district, analysts at Municipal Market Analytics said. 

Bonds of Reedy Creek Improvement District, which was created in the 1960s for the development of Walt Disney World in Florida, fell last week after Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would dissolve the district in 2023 without further legislative action.  

“If bond prices tumble again this week or after, investors able to ride out the volatility and manage related customer communications have an opportunity to earn incremental income,” Municipal Market Analytics’s Matt Fabian and Lisa Washburn wrote in a note to clients dated Monday. 

Reedy Creek has roughly $1 billion of municipal debt outstanding that was thrown into flux when the Florida lawmakers passed the bill last week. Florida statutes say that the obligations would be transferred to other local governments, and Reedy Creek has reassured bondholders the debt service will continue to be paid wile options are considered. 

Even with the latest developments, Florida will “very likely respect the strong non-impairment language” it promised to bondholders, the analysts said. That should mitigate any “hypothetical medium-term default risk” posed by the new law that may dissolve the district. 

Disney World Firefighters Could Lose Benefits If Reedy Creek District Gets Ax

Uncertain fate for Reedy Creek first responders ahead of special district dissolution

Reedy Creek's Professional Firefighters Association president Jon Shirey said he hasn’t heard much from the district’s administration about what the future holds for Reedy Creek employees.

“What’s going to happen with their jobs as a whole? What’s going to happen to benefits like retiree health care?” Shirey asked.

He said hundreds of first responders will be impacted. 

“We basically cover about 210 first responders out of the total workforce of 370 Reedy Creek employees, so we’re 58, 59 percent of the total workforce so it’s a pretty big deal for us," Shirey said.

Whether the district will be dissolving is still up in the air.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill dismantling it, but constitutional rights experts question if the state has violated Disney’s first amendment rights.

Disney tells investors state can’t dissolve special district without paying debt

As Florida legislators were rushing through passage of a bill to repeal the special district that governs Walt Disney World last week, they failed to notice an obscure provision in state law that says the state could not do what legislators were doing — unless the district’s bond debt was paid off. Disney, however, noticed and quietly sent a note to its investors to show that it was confident the Legislature’s attempt to dissolve the special taxing district operating the 39-square mile parcel it owned in two counties violated the “pledge” the state made when it enacted the district in 1967, and therefore was not legal. The result, Disney told its investors, is that it would continue to go about business as usual.

The statement, posted on the website of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board on April 21 by the Reedy Creek Improvement District, is the only public statement Disney has supplied since lawmakers unleashed their fury over the company’s vocal opposition to the “Parental Rights in Education” law, also known as the “don’t say gay” bill. The statement, first reported by WESH 2, quotes the statute which says, in part, that the “State of Florida pledges...it will not limit or alter the rights of the District...until all such bonds together with interest thereon...are fully met and discharged.”

Disney’s statement says, “In light of the State of Florida’s pledge to the District’s bondholders, Reedy Creek expects to explore its options while continuing its present operations, including levying and collecting its ad valorem taxes and collecting its utility revenues, paying debt service on its ad valorem tax bonds and utility revenue bonds, complying with its bond covenants and operating and maintaining its properties.’’ In essence, the state had a contractual obligation not to interfere with the district until the bond debt is paid off, said Jake Schumer, a municipal attorney in the Maitland law firm of Shepard, Smith, Kohlmyer & Hand, in an article for Bloomberg Tax posted on Tuesday and cited in a Law and Crime article.

Schumer noted that the bill dissolving Reedy Creek doesn’t say what should happen to its debts, but another state law requires that by default the county assumes a district’s debt along with all of its assets when it is dissolved. “This means that theoretically, Orange and Osceola counties will inherit upward of $1 billion in bond debt,’’ he wrote in the Bloomberg Tax article.

“By dissolving Reedy Creek, the Legislature essentially rewrote the promises made in the district’s bond offerings,’’ Schumer wrote. “Instead of bonds backed by a special district with the power to levy up to 30 mills in taxes, the property tax bonds will be backed jointly by two governments that can only generate a maximum of 10 mills in taxes.”

 

[Jules]

Guess what question our tame media never asks….

Any question that might taint America's corptocracy, of which they are a member.

 

[hobie1616]

There should be a picture with this article of DeSandanista stepping on his dick.

Disney's self-governing district says Florida cannot dissolve it without paying off its debts

Disney's self-governing special district, the Reedy Creek Improvement District, says that Florida's move to dissolve the district next year is not legal unless the state pays off Reedy Creek's extensive debts.

Reedy Creek is a special purpose district created by state law in May 1967 that gives The Walt Disney Company extensive governmental control over the land in and around its central Florida theme parks. With that power, Reedy Creek currently has about $1 billion in outstanding bond debt, according to the credit rating agency Fitch Ratings.

In a statement issued to its bondholders last Thursday, Reedy Creek pointed out that the 1967 law also includes a pledge from Florida to its bondholders. The law states that Florida "will not in any way impair the rights or remedies of the holders ... until all such bonds together with interest thereon, and all costs and expenses in connection with any act or proceeding by or on behalf of such holders, are fully met and discharged."

Due to that pledge, Reedy Creek said it expects to continue business as usual.

"In light of the State of Florida's pledge to the District's bondholders, Reedy Creek expects to explore its options while continuing its present operations, including levying and collecting its ad valorem taxes and collecting its utility revenues, paying debt service on its ad valorem tax bonds and utility revenue bonds, complying with its bond covenants and operating and maintaining its properties," Reedy Creek said.

The statement, posted to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, represents the first response from the Disney-run district since Florida Republicans moved to pass legislation that will dissolve the special purpose district on June 1, 2023. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the legislation into law on Friday. Disney has not made any public statements about the law.

The new law is just two pages long and avoids any discussion of details about how to unwind a half-century of infrastructure deals, nor does it lay out the next steps in the complicated process. Lawmakers in neighboring Orange and Osceola counties have expressed concerns that they will be stuck with paying off Reedy Creek's debts and will have to significantly raise property taxes on residents.

"If we had to take over the first response -- the public safety components for Reedy Creek -- with no new revenue, that would be catastrophic for our budget here within Orange County," Orange County Mayor Jerry L. Demings told reporters on April 21, before the official legislature vote that day. "It would put an undue burden on the rest of the taxpayers in Orange County to fill that gap."

DeSantis has said that Floridians will not see any tax increases due to the law and insisted that Disney will pay its "fair share" of taxes. He positioned the law dissolving Reedy Creek as "the first step in what's going to be a process to make sure that Disney should not run its own government."

How we got here

Disney, with 75,000 employees, is the largest single-site employer in Florida and is a key driver of the state's vital tourism business. Yet state officials took on the company's self-governing status as a form of retaliation for Disney's criticism of a law restricting discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools.

The law, titled the "Parental Rights in Education" bill and labeled by critics as the "Don't Say Gay" bill, prohibits schools from teaching children about sexual orientation or gender identity "in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate." The legislation also allows parents to bring lawsuits against a school district for potential violations.

The law's vague language and the threat of parental lawsuits have raised fears that it will lead to discrimination against LGBTQ students and will have a chilling effect on classroom discussion. DeSantis' spokesperson Christina Pushaw, however, said the legislation would protect kids from "groomers," a slang term for pedophiles, and described those who oppose the law as "probably groomers."

Disney CEO Bob Chapek initially declined to condemn the law but reversed course after facing employee criticism. A company spokesperson released a statement last month stating its goal is for the law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.

"Florida's HB 1557, also known as the 'Don't Say Gay' bill, should never have passed and should never have been signed into law," the statement said. The company said it was "dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country."

Earlier last week, DeSantis challenged lawmakers to unravel the 55-year-old Reedy Creek Improvement Act as part of a special legislative session. The impact of that legislation -- as well as its legality -- remains unclear.

 

[The_Real_XYZ]

Reedy Creek is a special purpose district created by state law in May 1967 that gives The Walt Disney Company extensive governmental control over the land in and around its central Florida theme parks. With that power, Reedy Creek currently has about $1 billion in outstanding bond debt, according to the credit rating agency Fitch Ratings.

Musk has already agreed to pay for that.

 

[Mrleft8]

Muskrat has more musk than courage.... But let him discharge it at will...... Eventually it will all trickle down..... Right?