Wow. Disney Pantsed Lil’ Ron!

(July 17, 2015) Ð Mickey Mouse and his friends celebrate the 60th anniversary of Disneyland park during a ceremony at Sleeping Beauty Castle featuring Academy Award-winning composer, Richard Sherman and Broadway actress and singer Ashley Brown, in Anaheim, Calif. on Friday, July 17. Celebrating six decades of magic, the Disneyland Resort Diamond Celebration features three new nighttime spectaculars that immerse guests in the worlds of Disney stories like never before with "Paint the Night," the first all-LED parade at the resort; "Disneyland Forever," a reinvention of classic fireworks that adds projections to pyrotechnics to transform the park experience; and a moving new version of "World of Color" that celebrates Walt DisneyÕs dream for Disneyland. (Paul Hiffmeyer/Disneyland Resort)
Mickey Mouse and his friends celebrate the 60th anniversary of Disneyland park during a ceremony on July 17, 2015 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Paul Hiffmeyer/Disneyland Resort via Getty Images)
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You may remember that as one of Ron DeSantis’s culture war gambits he punished Disney’s position on gay rights in the state by abolishing the special government jurisdiction which essentially allowed Disney to run Disney World as its own town or governmental district. That was the Reedy Creek Improvement District. DeSantis had the state legislature replace Reedy Creek with the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. Now the political appointees DeSantis put on the Oversight District board to lord it over Disney are crying foul, saying Disney pulled a fast one on them and essentially cut them out of any effective power for decades into the future.

On the last meeting of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the then-board approved a series of agreements and restrictive covenants (you can see them here) which, according to the Oversight Board folks, locks them out of any effective power for the better part of a century.

The DeSantis team has called in a right-wing law firm to see if it can get out from under the agreement. The law firm of Cooper & Kirk, surprise surprise!!!, recently hired failed Senate candidate Adam Laxalt and once employed fellow Harvardians Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz.

Disney responds that the then-board did everything in line with Florida law in public session. And well … sucks to be you, Ron, basically.

The covenant even goes in for what seems like some very Disneyified kings and queens and Shrek type trolling. The covenant declaration notes that if the agreement is deemed in violation of the rule against perpetuities the declaration will remain valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England living as of the date of this declaration.”

Since Charles has recently born grandchildren that would seem to lock this in place for roughly a century. DeSantis board member Brian Aungst Jr. rather lamely opines that he hopes Disney will work with the DeSantis board to correct the situation in a “very collaborative manner.”

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