In Florida's Reedy Creek Improvement District, Disney runs utilities, sets building codes, manages a fire service, and pays itself property taxes— a company acting as a municipal government. How did this come to be?
The Florida legislature voted on Wednesday (April 20) to annul Disney’s powers to govern its own special district in the state. The move, seeming retribution for Disney’s criticism of Florida’s new “Don’t Say Gay” law, could end in the dissolution of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, created in 1967 especially for the company to build Walt Disney World.
To many, it was likely news that a private enterprise enjoyed such municipal powers in the first place—especially over an area as large as Reedy Creek, which covers more than 25,000 acres. In Reedy Creek, Disney can draft construction codes, manage a fire department, run utilities, and even erect a nuclear plant. To fund such services, the company issues municipal bonds, but also effectively pays itself property taxes; it also pays Orange County to use its police force.
All in all, it’s a pretty unusual setup—and a very literal conflation of big business with government. So how did Disney get to govern Reedy Creek in the first place?
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