AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
The puppet board appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to oversee the special taxing district at Walt Disney World is taking the drastic move to defund a multimillion dollar budget for law enforcement services at the park properties — the same police presence that deterred the Pulse shooter from targeting Disney.
Ever since DeSantis launched his vindictive war against Disney just over a year ago, I’ve criticized it as an unconstitutional and petty threat to our state economy and environment, and warned how it had the potential to risk not just jobs but guest safety. This latest attack by the governor’s cronies moves that safety risk to from potential to all too real.
As reported Wednesday by WFTV, Orlando’s ABC affiliate, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD) decided to slash an $8 million annual budget that was being used to hire off-duty police officers from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO).
CFTOD board chairman Martin Garcia can be seen in the WFTV video below speaking at the meeting.
“There was spending on a number of fronts that was wasteful,” said Garcia. “Eight million dollars was being used for law enforcement services exclusively on Disney properties, and that doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“As we are doing more work,” he added, “it appears that there are a number of other naughty things that this old board did with district funds.”
This “wasteful” and “naughty” spending that has Garcia so vexed is integral to handling the complex security needs of the four theme parks, two water parks, golf courses, and dozens of hotels, shops, restaurants, and bars on the Walt Disney World property, and neither the chairman nor any of his fellow puppet board members seem to comprehend that or have any plan to meet those needs in another way.
As a refresher on how this bizarre DeSantis-created mess began, the CFTOD was spawned from a 2022 bill that revoked Disney’s special taxing district, originally called the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID), after the former Disney CEO publicly criticized the 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.
The original attempt to completely repeal RCID flopped when DeSantis and his minions in the legislature got smacked upside the head with the fact that dissolving RCID would dump more than a billion dollars of municipal bond debt on Central Florida taxpayers, among other issues. They came back with a new bill in 2023 that nibbled away a few of RCID’s powers and largely left it intact, but renamed it CFTOD and granted the power to appoint the directors to DeSantis, instead of Disney as the landowner.
Since then, DeSantis has continued to levy threats at Disney, including imposing higher taxes and increased regulations or seizing some of Disney’s land to sell to a competing theme park or even to build a prison. The puppet board members he appointed all came from various conservative activist circles (one notable example is Bridget Ziegler, the wife of the Republican Party of Florida chairman).
It’s a deliberate, weaponized incompetence, as none of DeSantis’ appointees have 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.
RCID was created in 1967 because Disney was buying such a large parcel of undeveloped land (it’s currently about 25,000 acres or 39 square miles, after spinning off a section in the 1990s to become the town of Celebration) that stretched across Orange and Osceola Counties. Neither the state of Florida 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, one of the more than 1,800 special taxing districts currently in Florida.
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 should 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. It’s similar to how parents might decide to send their child to private school even though they pay their taxes for the local public schools — and by choosing to opt out of the government-provided services, it’s not unreasonable to say the government should have less of a say in how those services are provided.
In the course of my research since this controversy first arose in early 2022, I’ve spoken with dozens of current and former Disney and RCID employees, consultants, contractors, and vendors, current and former local and state elected officials, law professors, local government attorneys, and other experts. In virtually every issue, the regulations imposed by RCID met — and in many cases, exceeded — any local, state, or federal standard (the Florida Legislature’s own research arm, the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, came to that same conclusion when it studied RCID in 2004).
As one example, the “EPCOT Codes,” Disney’s proprietary building codes, are extremely detailed and state-of-the-art, imposing the highest level of hurricane protection, backup generators, emergency exits, and other safety measures. Three separate contractors who have done work at Disney whom I’ve interviewed all called the EPCOT Codes “a pain in the a**” (an amusingly coincidental choice of phrase; none of them know each other) but all acknowledged these demanding standards achieved a top level of safety, aesthetics, and improved guest experiences.
RCID’s multimillion dollar budget also provides fire and EMT services through the Reedy Creek Fire Department, including completely covering the cost of any medical care or ambulance transportation services rendered to anyone on Disney property.
Law enforcement is handled differently, with RCID delegating most of the police responsibilities of thwarting shoplifters, managing tipsy guests attempting to “drink around the world” at EPCOT, preventing security threats and so on by hiring off-duty officers through OCSO.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one former Disney employee who was familiar with RCID functions told me that was partly an “optics” issue of not wanting guests to see some wannabe pickpocket tackled by a cop with a Mickey logo badge (not to mention the resultant liability issues) and also to get the background screening and training police officers receive that far exceed what a typical security guard might have.
This system also gives Disney flexibility to adjust the police presence on its property for special events, peak traffic times, and as otherwise needed. For the police officers themselves, it’s a completely voluntary program to earn extra income, with RCID paying both the off-duty officers for their time and separately paying OCSO for the officers to be able to us their county-owned patrol cars, uniforms, radios, weapons, and other equipment.
Disney is far from the only company that hires off-duty police officers to provide security; many other nightclubs, concert venues, and retail stores do the exact same thing. These establishments get the benefit of trained police officers, the officers get reliable supplemental income, and it’s extra help for the police department budget, not to mention the enhanced security for both customers and employees.
I just witnessed an example of this on Wednesday evening. I was leaving a grocery store and watched one of the managers get the attention of an off-duty Winter Park Police Department officer to point out a man who was walking out of the store; several WPPD officers then arrested the man in the parking lot. I do not know what the alleged offense was but regardless, the arrest was handled by the cops, not the store employees.
In perhaps one of the most heartbreakingly memorable examples of how this system works, off-duty OCSO police officers have been credited with preventing the Pulse nightclub shooting from happening at Disney.
Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at a downtown Orlando gay bar on June 12, 2016 before he was shot dead by police, but Pulse was not his original target. According to statements his wife Noor Salman made to federal authorities, the couple had scouted several Walt Disney World locations, including the shopping and entertainment complex known as Disney Springs, in the days before the shooting.
At Salman’s 2018 trial for obstruction and aiding her husband in the attack, federal prosecutors entered evidence that included Mateen buying a stroller and baby doll at a local Walmart on June 11 (one day before the shooting) to use to smuggle his gun into Disney property, and a video of him walking near the House of Blues on June 12 several hours before the shooting. According to NBC News, in the video, Mateen “looks behind him at police officers standing nearby.”
“The target of that terrorist attack was not the Pulse nightclub,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Sweeney said to jurors. “The target of the attack was Disney,” but after seeing the OSCO officers, “he had to choose a new target.”
In the aftermath of the Pulse shooting, Disney unsurprisingly launched an “unprecedented expansion” of their off-duty police presence, reported WKMG, Orlando’s CBS affiliate, as shown by RCID’s financial records, which are publicly posted online. In 2017, RCID also paid to build a police substation near Disney Springs for the OCSO supervisors to use to coordinate with their officers. The WKMG report also noted that Universal Studios, which is within the Orlando city limits, was hiring its own off-duty police officers through the Orlando Police Department, and quoted former Rep. John Mica (R-FL), who had chaired the House Transportation Committee, and then-Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings, who now serves as Orange County Mayor, in praising the parks’ security measures — specifically the use of off-duty police officers.
That’s the budget that CFTOD chairman Martin Garcia mocked as “wasteful” and “naughty,” and thinks can be eliminated entirely. Beyond the irony of our “tough on crime” governor having his puppets literally defund the police, one need not possess an Einstein-level intellect to comprehend how the visible presence of police officers can deter threats and aspiring criminals, ranging from a petty thief to a terrorist like the Pulse shooter. It’s simply insane to go from a highly visible police presence to none at all on a property that employs nearly 80,000 people and hosts tens of millions of visitors every year.
“DeSantis is actually defunding the actual police and making us less safe in order to pursue his petty vendetta against Disney,” former Orlando-area state representative Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat who’s now running for state senate, told Mediaite Wednesday evening. “This obsession has already cost Florida taxpayers millions in litigation fees and even more in lost economic development opportunities. When will this craziness end?”
I was born and raised in Orlando, and live here now. I know many current and former Disney employees, and my Facebook feed is peppered year round with posts from friends taking their kids to the parks, running the Disney marathon, or checking out the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival. Deliberately undermining a key foundational element of Disney security puts people I care deeply about in danger. It’s infuriating to watch Garcia dismiss this very real risk by claiming the need for law enforcement “doesn’t make sense” to him when all of RCID’s past budgets and meeting minutes are public records. Disney is a for-profit business with shareholders that heavily scrutinize every move and even minor incidents at the parks tend to make headlines. The mere suggestion of completely defunding the OCSO presence at Disney seems like a cynically depraved move to incite trouble at the parks. Will DeSantis be satisfied that he’s won his war on “woke” if a mass shooter slaughters kids waiting in line to meet Buzz Lightyear?
According to the Orlando Sentinel, the CFTOD budget process includes two more public hearings and then a final vote on September 27, so theoretically the $8 million budget elimination isn’t yet final. But with a governor whose presidential campaign is teetering on the brink of collapse if he can’t quickly woo more GOP primary voters away from former President Donald Trump, it seems unlikely that he’ll let his puppet board back off this decision, as foolhardy as it may be.
One silver lining is that RCID’s last contract with OCSO to hire off-duty officers goes through 2024, so this ill-advised move will not immediately impact safety at Disney — and that gives time for the Mouse’s lawsuit against the governor and his puppet board to grind its way through the court system and hopefully soon put an end to this destructive mess.
UPDATE 2:45 pm ET: Here is a screenshot from the security camera video footage from the House of Blues on June 11, 2016, mere hours before the Pulse shooting, showing Mateen walking past the House of Blues entrance where multiple OCSO officers are clearly visible in the foreground.
These are the officers whose paychecks and funding Garcia and his fellow DeSantis cronies on the CFTOD board would eliminate, removing the security those officers provide to a busy bar, concert venue, and terrorist target.
Again, for over fifty years the system where Disney paid all its county property taxes to Orange and Osceola (plus remitting sales taxes, hotel taxes, etc. to the state) and then paid extra taxes to RCID to provide this higher level of infrastructure and security worked well — for the company, for Floridians, and for Disney’s visitors — until DeSantis decided to try and burn it all down because one milquetoast press release ruffled his feathers.