Disney chief govt Bob Iger struck again at Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Monday, calling his efforts to rein within the firm’s energy “anti-business and anti-Florida”.

Iger’s feedback on the fallout from final 12 months’s “Don’t Say Homosexual” controversy got here as DeSantis referred to as for a state investigation into last-minute strikes by outgoing Disney-appointed board members to neuter the facility of a brand new board consisting completely of the Florida governor’s appointees.

In his most intensive feedback concerning the Florida controversy since returning to Disney in November, Iger stated DeSantis had determined to “retaliate” towards the corporate for its place on a legislation that limits what academics can say in public faculties about LGBTQ points. He additionally implicitly criticised how his predecessor as chief govt, Bob Chapek, dealt with the matter,

“A 12 months in the past the corporate took a place on pending Florida laws, and whereas the corporate could not have dealt with the place it took very nicely, the corporate has a proper to freedom of speech identical to people do,” Iger stated.

DeSantis, Iger stated, “bought very indignant concerning the place Disney took and seemingly has determined to retaliate towards us, together with the naming of a brand new board overseeing the property and the enterprise”. 

Iger stated that “any motion merely to retaliate for a place that the corporate took sounds not simply anti-business but it surely sounds anti-Florida”. He famous that Disney deliberate to take a position $17bn in Walt Disney World over the subsequent decade, which might create 13,000 jobs within the state and plenty of different oblique jobs

The Disney shareholder assembly opened with a video presentation by Iger from Orlando, the place he stated he was “so pleased with the Disney legacy in central Florida”. He referenced the legacy of Roy and Walt Disney, who within the Nineteen Sixties petitioned lawmakers within the state for particular powers to control the world round what’s now Disney World.

Final 12 months DeSantis started a sequence of strikes to strip these 55-year-old powers from Disney. He first sought to dissolve Disney’s particular tax district, then referred to as the Reedy Creek Enchancment District. Nonetheless, doing so would have transferred huge tax burdens on native counties, and so the plan was scrapped.

This 12 months, the Florida legislature handed a legislation that renamed the district the Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board and allowed the governor to nominate its members. DeSantis stuffed the board together with his supporters.

However final week the board realised that their Disney-appointed predecessors had signed an settlement that gave the corporate management over the theme park resort’s 27,000 acres — rendering the physique basically powerless.

The settlement consists of what is named a royal clause, which might lengthen its time period restrict for many years — “till 21 years after the loss of life of the final survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, King of England, dwelling as of the date of this declaration”.

In a letter to the state’s inspector-general calling for an investigation, DeSantis stated the strikes had been “collusive and self-dealing” and meant to “nullify not too long ago handed laws . . . and defy the desire of Floridians”.

DeSantis additionally claimed that the Disney-controlled board’s transfer suffered from “critical authorized infirmities” together with “insufficient discover”.

Disney has stated its strikes had been all above board, noting that it had marketed public hearings on the measures within the native newspaper.

“All agreements signed between Disney and the District had been acceptable, and had been mentioned and accepted in open, observed public boards,” it stated in an announcement final week.