- Final month, Disney sued Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, escalating a warfare that is gone on for over a yr.
- Disney’s CEO Bob Iger addressed the feud through the firm’s second quarter earnings name.
- Iger threatened DeSantis, asking the governor if he wished Disney to “pay extra taxes or not.”
Disney’s feud with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has gone from bitter to downright acrimonious in current months.
Throughout Disney’s second quarter earnings name on Wednesday, CEO Bob Iger threw the most recent punch, making a seeming risk to the state and its chief.
“One query: Does the state need us to speculate extra, make use of extra individuals, and pay extra taxes — or not?” he requested.
“We have constructed a enterprise that employs, as we have stated earlier than, over 75,000 individuals and attracts tens of thousands and thousands of individuals to the state,” Iger stated.
He added that that Disney is “the most important taxpayer in Central Florida,” paying over $1.1 billion in state and native taxes final yr.
DeSantis and Disney have been locked in an influence battle that started when Disney pushed again in opposition to a controversial invoice, nicknamed the “Do not Say Homosexual Invoice.” Since then, DeSantis has been attempting to wrest management from — or, as Disney places it, retaliate in opposition to — the corporate.
Over the previous yr, DeSantis has labored to dismantle Disney’s particular tax district, which provides the corporate sure self-governing rights. He is additionally thought-about developing toll roads into the park, and steered constructing a competing theme park or jail close by.
Issues took a flip final month when the leisure big sued the governor, accusing him of in search of to “weaponize authorities energy” in opposition to the corporate.
The feud is about “one factor and one factor solely, and that is retaliating in opposition to us for taking a place about pending laws,” Iger stated throughout Wednesday’s earnings name. Iger contended that in taking a place in opposition to the “Do not Say Homosexual Invoice,” the corporate is “merely exercising our proper to free speech.”
Iger added that the particular privileges Disney been given to primarily govern itself are a direct operate of how a lot the corporate contributes to the state’s economic system — and that they don’t seem to be, actually, all that particular. He famous that there are about 2,000 particular districts in Florida, together with the Daytona Speedway and retirement group The Villages.
“We pay extra taxes, particularly extra actual property taxes, because of that particular district,” he added.
Finally, he turned the query again to DeSantis and the state of Florida, asking whether or not they may actually afford to lose the roles and cash that Disney is producing for the state.
The ball is in DeSantis’s kingdom.
Disney and the workplace of Ron DeSantis didn’t instantly reply to Insider’s request for a remark.
