Have I not been following this correctly, they're dissolving the district right? Kind of like a company going bankrupt, chapter 7, and dissolving completely.
Sure, they could add new laws to do it differently, but they didn't. And they set a deadline already, so if they don't do something else, doesn't it just dissolve?
From the reporting, I'm assuming the current law, not some future possible additional change, did transfer the debt and assets of the district to the county. But, it didn't transfer the taxing authority. It just dissolved that. It's like the counties are getting all the assets and debts at liquidation but none of the revenue generating authority. Opps.
Those quotes feel like wishful thinking and not what was actually done.
It is not like a company going bankrupt. It is removing a special district within the state. When you remove the special district, the responsibility for that district then returns to the normal governing body (in this case Orange and Osceola counties) from which it was carved out. Unless a new district is formed, all assets, property, and debt contained therein is transferred to the the county. So anything that is part of RCID (not private land owned by Disney) would become part of the counties in which it lies in (including debt).
This law effects all special districts formed before 1968. The premise is that since the current Florida constitution was updated an approved in 1968 anything formed prior to the current constitution can be dissolved. This will likely open up a lot of legal challenges. If "true" then any current city, treaty, contract, law, property ownership, etc. could be dissolved by the current legislation by a majority vote (A VERY slippery slope). So many entities outside of Disney may challenge the validity of this law, not just those directly effected.
Almost every port and water authority, the Daytona 500 raceway, and other entities could be impacted by this law. The assumption is that each of these special districts (with the exception of RCID) will be re-established intact. Of course, greed and power could derail that plan. What if a city or county wants to gain control over the port authority? What if a large land owner with deep pockets wants to force changes to a water authority district? There could be legal challenges to re-establishing each district. This is potentially a Pandora's Box for the state of Florida.
Since this law was written in just a few days, it is apparent that no one thought through all of the financial/tax implications for the counties. As it stand now, without the additional tax collected by RCID, WDW would likely pay less taxes. As for the speed of getting things done, I am sure Disney would enter into Private/Public partnerships to expedite any projects.
So in the end, this will be a black eye on Disney from a PR standpoint, they may loose some self government (assuming law is not overturned) which could impact speed/quality of infrastructure projects and maintenance, but likely will actually lower taxes and overall costs for WDW because that burden will be spread over the entire county tax base. For the Politicians, they will sell this as a "victory" and likely help them with their base constituents through the mid-term elections, but next year they will have to deal with the mess they just created. For the State, this likely will cause pause for some large companies to locate their businesses in a state that retaliates against business based on politics. It could also have unintended consequences on other special districts. So, no real "winner" however this plays out, but maybe same extra cash for Disney to build another "E" ticket ride that we can all complain took too long, is too expensive and in the wrong park!
