Good job Netflix… not… 
I haven’t watched this show but I know it has a big following and it’s gone…
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Netflix cancels stuff before I even have a chance to get into it. Makes me want to not bother with a show that may end up suddenly cut.
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As an attorney who works in commercial development and has worked with special service districts and public financing incentives, I can say, that the move to “dissolve” the district is a purely political sound bite.
It will be incredibly difficult to unwind that. In all likelihood it won’t actually end up happening. If it does end up happening it will be a really stupid move. It could bankrupt the surrounding counties who have to pick up the infrastructure maintenance.
These districts are far more common than they are being sold as by the Florida legislature. I would wager to say that everybody who reads this has multiple in their city right now and a couple under consideration.
For the most part, these districts are pretty innocuous. City says “hey developer you need to build public roads if you want to build your commercial buildings here.” Developer says “ok, but we get to collect taxes to reimburse us for the cost of construction and maintenance.” Usually the initial construction is funded by a public bond which is sold by one of the major brokers of these types of things to investors for bonds (other cities, states, companies, etc.). To call these districts “Self-Governing” is a pretty huge over-simplification. They still need to abide by Federal, state, county, and local laws. They just have taxing authority in a defined geographic area for defined costs.
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Thanks for the explanation. Sometimes it is easier to just listen to the inter-web and believe everything you hear there.
Unless, of course, this is the same…thing…
Kidding, of course. 
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Calling a special service district “self-governing” is like calling a company that owns its own medical insurance fund “performing its own surgery for it’s employees.”
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Since there are many of these ‘self-governing’ sites, can Disney sue DeSantis for singling them out ? Also, there was report that Florida could only do this, if they took responsibility for Disney’s (huge) debt. Its clear as mud, that DeSantis is trying to score brownie points with his base, even if it doesnt pan out. Kind of like the CRT BS.
Also (and essentially my point prior), stock markets and investors are as heavily influenced by perception as they are facts many times.
Sure, there are additional factors why Disney stock is at a 52 week low (it’s actually now at the price it was when Covid first hit and they were completely shut down two years ago which is ugly), but this situation didn’t help…hence the continued losses.
Down $5.76 the last week and nearly $30 the last month.
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Props to @drunkwooky for explaining stuff. Sounds like this is all one big empty gesture some Florida politicians are doing and Disney will keep on keeping on. Seems like in the end only lawyers will win as this ties up courts.
And shareholders will lose.
But, I suppose just like we say with comics…buy low (if Disney is your thing).
So, I’m not terribly familiar with Florida state law on this point. It’s one of the States I don’t do transactions in (pretty much Florida, California, and New York).
However, usually how these things work is that a state statute enables municipalities to enter into contracts with private organizations to set up these districts. The counties or cities usually have boards named something along the lines of “Suchandsuch City Board of Redevelopment” that considers these deals and enters into the contracts. So, at bottom these are consensual contractual relationships between developers and municipalities.
Usually the city does not have the resources to put in roads, sewers, utilities, fire service, mosquito abatement, you name it. Neither does the developer, but the developer is willing to take on the bond debt to finance it in exchange for the ability to recoup the money. The theory is that this is almost a quadruple win. Developer gets their approval for construction, city gets infrastructure without paying, taking on debt, having to administer a larger tax population if more citizens move into the development, not having to administer canals, utilities, fire departments, etc., the investors in the bonds get a return of guaranteed interest secured by the property, and the city also gets development in potentially a blighted area, businesses moving in and paying sales tax, residents moving in and paying property tax, so on and so forth.
It’s used often because it is a very reliable way to prop up undeveloped, underserved, or blighted areas.
Now, granted, Disney got their special tax district in the 60s and I bet the terms were far more developer friendly than they would otherwise get today.
Some coworkers and I brainstormed hypothetical claims today. It’s all a bit hard to say what the claim would be without actually reading the district’s governing documents (which should all be public).
However, I think there’s a decent claim that by interfering in this contract, the State of Florida violated the procedural requirements of a government taking in eminent domain.
The holders of the municipal bonds also have a major claim against the State of Florida for violating the terms of the contract. Jacob Schumer at Bloomberg pointed out: “In authorizing Reedy Creek to issue bonds, the Florida legislature included a remarkable statement—included in Reedy Creek’s bond offerings—regarding its own promise to bondholders: “The State of Florida pledges to the holders of any bonds issued under this Act that it will not limit or alter the rights of the District to own, acquire, construct, reconstruct, improve, maintain, operate or furnish the projects or to levy and collect the taxes, assessments, rentals, rates, fees, tolls, fares and other charges provided for herein … until all such bonds together with interest thereon, and all costs and expenses in connection with any action or proceeding by or on behalf of such holders, are fully met and discharged.”
What this means is that the State of Florida has contractually agreed with the investors in municipal bonds that the State will not interfere with the operation of the district until all outstanding bond debts are repaid.
This violates the U.S.constitution. Not in some wishy-washy, open to interpretation, type of way, but in a very boring, well established, “this is how a functioning government has to work way”:
“Under the U.S. Constitution, a state can only impair an existing contract if the impairment is reasonable and necessary to serve an important government purpose. As early as 1866, the U.S. Supreme Court held that once a local government issues a bond based on an authorized taxing power, the state is contract-bound and cannot eliminate the taxing power supporting the bond.”
First year constitutional law stuff here. (Cite).
Beyond that, this is just terrible public policy. Even assuming the state legislator has the power to do this, who would ever do business with the state of Florida after this behavior? It’s hard enough trusting a contract you sign with the State knowing they have governmental immunity and caps on how much you can recover from them, but outright cancellation of a contract that propped up billions of dollars of improvements and an entire subsidiary company dedicated to administering all these services in that area? Madness. Why would any developer trust that they would be able to recoup the tens of millions of dollars of roads and infrastructure they constructed with this type of activity on the books?
What I would do, if the state continues to not recognize the contract as valid any longer, is just go directly to the municipalities that stand to take on the burden of administering all these services and say “hey, you see that contract over there? You want to sign this that says you’ll just abide by the same terms with us under the state enabling statute? Cool? Status quo? Carry on as usual? Great!”
PR sanitized, contract preserved, business as usual.
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Great legal explanation ! Thanks ! Got my popcorn ready to see how this all plays out legally, and in politics. Right now Republicans who were considered pro-business, are sounding like moderate Democrats of yore, albeit the right wing variety. The extremes are tearing both parties apart; as an independent I wish for a good spoiler moderate party or parties, to get some compromise, and to be pragmatic.
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take with a heavy grain of salt but it seems this person got a lot of stuff right about doctor strange 2. Some curious stuff is no mention of kang, f4 or x-men
I follow that guy on Twitter
I don’t know… I heard Rocket and Kraglin will be the only remaining members after GoTG 3 that were in the previous movies. This says Quill and Cosmo.
ive seen his stuff before, he was one of the guys saying jennifer kale was in house of agatha a few months back
Two interesting Disney stories:
Will Disney+ be next for a price hike?
Netflix is working on ad revenue model to make up for losing customers
I think Disney shareholders might also be agreeing with Iger at this point in time:
ESPN just trying to get more money with all the restructuring of college football conferences going on right now, so they have better leverage.
Disney+ is coming out with an “ads included” tier
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