Column: Ron DeSantis has a new attack on Disney, and it’s truly stupid

The eyes of the political world will be on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during Wednesday night’s GOP debate.

For most observers, the question will be whether DeSantis can salvage his fading presidential ambitions from the Milwaukee stage. My question is: Will the TV makeup artists be able to conceal the injuries he’s sustained by stepping on another rake in his campaign against Walt Disney Co.?

DeSantis’ latest misstep is an assault on Disney World discounts and other modest perks traditionally enjoyed by employees of the special district set up to oversee the land and infrastructure serving the park.

The governor’s oversight board of hand-picked stooges on Monday filed a complaint to Florida’s state inspector general accusing the company of paying “unethical benefits and perks” to the district’s workers and their families.

The board said “the scheme raises significant questions regarding self-dealing” by its predecessor board, since those five members were supposedly in line, along with about 400 other district employees and their families, to receive discounts on park tickets, hotel stays and merchandise.

Sounds pretty serious, no? Well, no. More on that in a moment. First, a quick gallop through the back story.

It will be remembered that the conflict between DeSantis and Disney began when the company’s former chairman, Bob Chapek, publicly criticized DeSantis’ so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which is aimed at suppressing discussions of gender issues in public school classrooms.

DeSantis retaliated by moving to revoke Disney’s near-dictatorial control over the 43-square-mile territory on which Disney World and its related parks and resorts are located.

The parcel outside Orlando was then known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District and was governed by a five-member board of Disney allies until DeSantis swung into action.

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The district had been created in a deal between Walt Disney and Florida’s then-Republican governor, Claude Kirk, signed into law in 1967. The goal was to enable Disney to avoid the honky-tonk character of development around Disneyland in Anaheim, and instead keep the Florida property in perfectly coiffed white-bread comeliness.

DeSantis, who seems to view everything in the world through a bile duct (hat-tip to novelist R.A. Lafferty for the turn of phrase), sought and received the state legislature’s permission to fire the Reedy Creek board and replace it with his own cronies. He did so in March. Also, the district was renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.

Since then, the governor and the company have been in open combat. Just before the changeover, Disney signed long-term agreements with the old board, effectively stripping its successors of all their authority over development.

The new board has sued to nullify those agreements. Disney has sued back, charging the governor with illegally retaliating against the company for speaking its mind. At the moment, Disney appears to have the upper hand in this fight, though the outcome will probably be in the hands of state and federal judges.

In any event, DeSantis told CNBC on Aug. 14 that he has “basically moved on” from the conflict and urged Disney to drop its lawsuit. Disney’s response was “not so fast”: It promptly filed a motion seeking damages from the DeSantis administration for trampling over its free-speech rights.

That brings us to the latest installment of this farcical affair. That’s the referral to the state inspector general filed by the current oversight board.

The board asserts that the discounts on hotels, merchandise, food and beverages granted the district’s employees and their families “cost taxpayers over $2.5 million” last year alone. The board put forth this figure as though it’s a burden on the good taxpaying souls of Orange and Osceola counties, where the district sits.

Actually, it’s nothing of the kind. Who pays taxes to the district? Disney, that’s who. In other words, Disney has been charging itself for the cost of keeping the district’s workers just a little bit happier.

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According to the district’s financial reports, Disney and its associated resorts account for 95% of the district’s assessed valuation, the basis of its tax revenues, which in turn provide 97.4% of its budget. The balance of the assessed valuation and the tax revenues comes from hotels, movie theaters, shops and other entities, which all are Disney’s tenants. The $2.5 million was about 1.5% of the district’s operating budget last year.

Who gets these benefits? For the most part, they’re district employees, of which there were 392 last year, and their families. The board grouses that the former board members also received “VIP Main Entrance passes” to the parks, but it’s hard to say that these were significant drains on the district’s bottom line.

As for the ethical implications of all this, it seems that the district board had a teensy ethical issue of its own when it made the referral to the inspector general.

Glen Gilzean, who was appointed administrator of the tourism district in April, also served as the chair of the Florida state Commission on Ethics. The problem is that members of that commission aren’t permitted to hold any public office.

Gilzean resigned from his commission post, which is unpaid, on Tuesday, choosing to keep his district job, which pays $400,000 a year. He said in his resignation letter that he had no idea that holding both jobs was a no-no, which only raises the question of how he got the job as commission chair if he was so ignorant of this fundamental fact. (He was appointed to the commission by DeSantis.)

The ethics commission’s general counsel recalls events differently. He wrote in an Aug. 17 legal opinion that the commission’s executive director told Gilzean flatly on April 26 that he couldn’t hold both jobs. Someone is lying. I wonder who.

Put it all together, and it looks as though DeSantis and his lackeys haven’t “moved on” from their fight with Disney at all.

We should be grateful: As long as Hollywood’s actors and writers are on strike, someone has to generate entertainment content. Why not Ron DeSantis? He’s been great at it, so far.