143
Shocking. Everything Republicans touch gets cancer.
Walt Disney World getting to be exempt by state laws was pure corpo corruption to begin with.
They were not exempt from state laws. They just essentially ran their own municipality as opposed to being within one run by a nearby city or county. This also meant that they had to operate the government organizations of a municipality for the Reedy Creek Improvement District like police and fire, including taxes, etc. in addition to operating everything for the park itself. However, since the land owned by Disney was the only thing in the district, that wasn't really an issue.
The only reason you don't really see this elsewhere is that amusement parks usually aren't built on 27,000 acres of empty swampland with nothing else nearby. Amusement parks are almost always built near existing cities and municipalities already governing the areas. Disney World was built in the middle of a swamp with nothing nearby originally for it to affect.
The Florida State Legislature in 1967 created the Reedy Creek Improvement District after Walt petitioned for more autonomy so they could build EPCOT, which was originally going to be a fully planned "community of tomorrow". After Walt's death the company decided not to get into city-building however, so EPCOT became more focused on the idea rather than actually building a city.
It's been operating semi-independently ever since, paying taxes, maintaining roads, police, fire, etc. just fine while allowing Disney to expand the park as needed. The only reason it became an "issue" was DeSantis not liking Disney's politics and deciding to go after them for daring to speak out against his politics, which the US Supreme Court has continuously said over the years is clearly protected by the First Amendment. Notably his first attempt to "punish" Disney was going to saddle nearby counties with millions of dollars in debt and requirements to manage police, fire, etc. which they simply wouldn't be able to do. No thought went into it whatsoever, it was simply a State Governor wanting to punish a company for publicly being against his politics.
They are not exempt from "state laws" generally. Though there are some exceptions.
They were mostly self governing like a corporate municipality. And state laws were AFAICT rarely enforced (probably in part because they didn't need to be particularly transparent)
What a surprise, the changes made by a wannabe fascist dictator Governor trying to "punish" a company for daring to talk bad about his politics resulted in new terrible management. Who would have seen that coming? Everyone.
No shit, you don't say...
? The amusement park has a government?
The area it is in.
The park itself is 39 miles² or 101km².
That's the same size as the city nearest to me (which is 102km²).
The city of Boston is 125km².
They ran their own municipality
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
143 points (99.3% liked)
News
23296 readers
1158 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS