Disney Firefighters Who Backed DeSantis’ Takeover of Tax District Shocked and Upset When Board Moves to End Their Park Passes

The firefighters who protect Walt Disney World made headlines when they controversially backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) takeover of the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID), the special taxing district on Disney property. But now that alliance seems to be turning sour after the governor’s new appointees on the district board moved to end one of the firefighters’ most prized perks — a shocking move that left one firefighter “in tears” at the most recent board meeting.

I’ve written at length about DeSantis’ war with Mickey, which was sparked in early 2022 when Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek issued a press release criticizing Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill (dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by many of its critics) after it passed. Disney didn’t actually do anything about the bill after that press release, but it was enough to trigger DeSantis’ ire.

Cue a year-and-a-half of hastily-passed, poorly-conceived, unconstitutional bills in which the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature did DeSantis’ bidding without question or challenge, initially trying to repeal RCID outright and then backing off after they had their noses rubbed in the politically unpalatable stench of RCID’s billion-dollar-plus bond debt that would have then been dumped on county taxpayers — plus some other intractable road blocks related to the RCID-employed firefighters.

Earlier this year, DeSantis signed a bill that revoked Disney’s authority to appoint the RCID board members and granted it to himself. Since then, the renamed “Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board” has been an exercise in petty threats and what I’ve called “a deliberate, weaponized incompetence,” as all of the governor’s appointees to his new puppet board lack theme park management experience, a sharp contrast to the past district leadership where people had almost always worked for RCID and/or Disney for years, if not decades, before joining the board. (John Classe has been RCID District Administrator since 2016 and the new CFTOD board has kept him on as a consultant, one of the few smart moves they’ve made since he actually understands how the district functions.)

The history of RCID dates back to the 1960s, when Walt Disney himself decided on Central Florida for his new theme park. A 1967 charter passed by the Florida Legislature enacted RCID as a critical step to bringing Walt Disney World here. Disney was buying such a large parcel of undeveloped land (currently about 25,000 acres or 39 square miles) that stretched across Orange and Osceola Counties, that neither the state nor the counties had the funds, staff, or ability to plan and construct the roads, utilities, water lines, and other critical improvements needed to turn the property into the theme park complex that now powers the state economy, so RCID was created.

Contrary to a common misperception, RCID is not a “tax break” for Disney. The exact opposite is true: for the past fifty-plus years, Disney paid property taxes to both Orange and Osceola County at the same millage rate as all other county taxpayers, and then paid an additional tax to RCID. In fiscal year 2022, those extra taxes totaled a roughly $160 million annual budget that was used to cover a very broad range of services and infrastructure (water and sewer, road construction and maintenance, trash and recycling, power plants, a fire department and EMT services, wetlands mitigation and environmental management, building permits, landscaping, etc.).

It is important to note that these special taxing districts — there are more than 1,800 of them currently in Florida — are created with the consent of the property owners, because they are agreeing to pay an extra tax for a designated purpose, so they are drafted to legally grant the property owners themselves the power to appoint the district board members. It’s not some sort of secretive or corrupt “self-dealing,” as the governor and his allies have attempted to suggest, but instead something that is core to the existence of these statutes and enacted into law, along with detailed requirements for public records disclosures by these district boards.

It should also be noted that even though Disney is paying the full property tax to Orange and Osceola, it is not asking the counties to provide any of the services it handles through RCID. And in virtually every one of the items in its multimillion-dollar budget, RCID has been spending it on services and infrastructure at a level that is more specialized and at a higher quality than what a local government would typically provide.

As one example, the fire and EMT services provided through the Reedy Creek Fire Department (RCFD) include completely covering the cost of any medical care or ambulance transportation services rendered to anyone on Disney property. That is a decision that was made years ago; cynics will argue that’s to help The Mouse avoid lawsuits if some guest trips on a cobblestone on a Magic Kingdom sidewalk, but the end result is that Disney does foot the bill, saving an injured guest potentially thousands of dollars in ambulance fees.

In the years leading up to DeSantis’ spat with Mickey, Reedy Creek Professional Firefighters’ Association (the RCFD union) was engaged in tense negotiations with the RCID board over a number of issues, including pay and benefits. DeSantis publicly voiced support for the firefighters and they publicly announced their support for his takeover of RCID earlier this year.

At first, this seemed to pay off for the firefighters. DeSantis’ puppet board voted in July to approve a new contract that raised pay and granted other demands of the RCPFA union.

The RCPFA union had also been one of the major issues that stymied DeSantis’ original 2022 plan to revoke RCID outright. Their long-running contracts granted them lifetime Disney passes for themselves and their families and lifetime health insurance. Abolishing RCID would have eliminated all that, and the union members were very vocal about their opposition. DeSantis shifted gears to taking over the board appointments instead of eliminating RCID completely, and then the union publicly gave their support.

Well, this new board appointed by DeSantis has completely different motivations than the previous RCID boards appointed by the Disney landowner entities, and it’s having immediate, major consequences.

Disney unsurprisingly sued in federal court to protect their First Amendment rights to criticize the government and to roll back DeSantis’ punitive statutes, the CFTOD board filed a competing lawsuit in state court, and the board has approved millions of dollars of legal fees (to be paid to law firms allied with the governor, of course). Last month, I reported how the puppet board had moved to defund the $8 million budget that pays for off-duty Orange County Sheriff’s deputies to provide additional security on Disney property, despite the clear benefits of a law enforcement presence at theme parks that are an enticing target for criminals and terrorists.

These considerations seemed to fly over the head of CFTOD board chairman Manny Garcia, who called the police funding “wasteful” and “naughty.” That same type of uninformed mindset seems to be driving these board members’ willingness to slash the firefighters’ park perks now.

At the CFTOD board meeting this week, a budget proposal was presented that would eliminate the Disney World park passes for all district employees. “One firefighter who spoke during the public comment period in the meeting broke down in tears over the change, saying he otherwise couldn’t afford to take his family to the parks,” reported Politico’s Kimberly Leonard.

Disney annual passes for Florida residents start at $749 plus tax per person for a weekday and weekend pass, meaning any RCFD firefighter with a family of four was getting a benefit worth thousands of dollars per year, and hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetime.

Politico reported that CFTOD chairman Garcia had suggested a proposed replacement for the park passes as a “$1,000 stipend, after taxes, so that district employees could use the money to attend any restaurant or hotel, not just those affiliated with Disney,” but noted the obvious math this was not the same level of benefits at all.

Garcia was quoted as expressing confusion over the value of the park passes and what would be an equivalent perk, asking out loud, “Is that [$1,000] the right number? We don’t know.”

“If it needs to be higher we’ll do it,” he added, but that seems to be an empty promise in light of his other comments about the district budget.

Leonard didn’t name the firefighter who “broke down in tears,” but Scott Gustin, an independent reporter who covers developments at Disney and other theme parks, tweeted a video of a RCFD firefighter named Pete Simon talking about how important these park passes were to his family and fellow firefighters, and the sense of betrayal they felt.

The firefighters and retirees had “worked their entire lives and earned this benefit,” said Simon. “When the district changed hands last year, we were told that our jobs and our benefits were safe…and we welcomed that change,” because they had been “stonewalled” in their negotiations with the RCID board.

“We were promised this new administration was going to make this place better, was going to run it better, was going to get us all the resources that we’ve been needing,” he continued, dismay clear in his voice, but “all we’ve seen and heard are cuts. Cuts to budget. Cuts to staffing. Cuts to maintenance. And now cuts to benefits.”

This is undoubtedly a frustrating betrayal for the firefighters, but it’s a completely unsurprising one. No reasonable person would expect Disney — a multibillion-dollar company with global operations and a reputation for aggressively litigating to protect their intellectual property and business operations — would not go to court to defend RCID.

The RCPFA union spent years battling the RCID board for pay and benefit increases and additional staffing and equipment upgrades. They weren’t getting what they wanted, but the previous board at least was appointed by Disney and therefore were driven by several motivations, like keeping the park properties a safe and world-class entertainment venue, and keeping district employees loyal to the Disney brand by giving their families free park passes.

This new board has no such motivations; they were hand-selected by DeSantis because they were conservative activists outspoken on the same culture war issues he has made a core part of his presidential campaign (Bridget Ziegler, the wife of the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, is among them).

And now there are millions of dollars of litigation costs being incurred, all because DeSantis couldn’t stand being criticized in one measly press release and wanted to brag on Fox News about fighting against “woke” corporations, so his puppet board is making draconian cuts to make room in the budget to pay all those lawyers.

For better or for worse, the Florida economy is driven by tourism, and Disney is the engine that powers its core. Cutting critical infrastructure, reducing promised benefits to longtime employees and retirees, and repeatedly causing the kind of chaos and friction that arises from appointing completely inexperienced and incompetent people to the district board isn’t making Disney any less “woke,” but it does risk making it less safe and our state economy less successful.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.