Did the folks at Disney even read the bill?
I’m fine with LGBTXYZ’s civil rights, and all the other letters of the alphbet too.
But no third grade teacher should be asking my grandson this question below. Let’s leave that up to the Barbarians, in a good old dive bar in Somerville:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDpGsFI3WNg
To Any teacher who thinks talking about sexual orientation with first graders is OK… I totally agree with these folks below…I could not have said it better myself:
Disney finds itself between a rock and a hard place.
Their employees insist that they back LGBT rights. But that is in conflict with state law in Florida where they have significant investment.
How do they maneuver out of this problem?
I recall a story of McDonald’s being criticized for flying an American flag at a store during the Viet Nam war. They paid a truck driver to back into the flag pole and knock it down. So they had an excuse to no longer fly the flag without offending either side.
Perhaps Disney will find a way to move its Florida assets to another entity so the entity can comply with Florida law and enjoy the tax benefits while Disney itself supports LGBT rights.
The cost of the state legislature’s revenge law will be painful to the residents of Osceola and Orange Counties, to the tune of $2000-$3000 per taxpayer as the counties assume the $2b debt maintained by the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Secured currently by the financial leverage of the Disney company, the debt will have to be refinanced through an expensive bond issue.
This does not take into account the cost of building the administrative and bureaucratic operations that the Reedy Creek Improvement District provided to Disney World. Nor does it take into account having to renegotiate thousands of service and vendor contracts maintained by the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Most people do not understand how an improvement district works, but basically it provides land use planning/permitting, utility services, environmental management, security and more to its residents, who happen in this case to be multiple Disney theme parks, resorts and other operations.
The state legislature has made all this the responsibility of two unprepared counties though a bill that ran a page and a half and for which whose supporters publicly admitted they will have to figure out how make it work later.
Fuskie
Who notes Disney has been successfully working with local counties in California and with governments around the world for decades, so while how Disney World operations may change (expect legal challenges and political regret over the next year), Disney World itself will continue to go on, and the Disney company to continue to execute its long-term strategic business plan to return to a post-pandemic growth path…
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