Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ new district board created to oversee Walt Disney World in Florida announced it will be eliminating its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Back in February, Gov. DeSantis signed legislation creating a new district board to regulate Disney World. Since 1967, Disney enjoyed a unique self-governing status through the Reedy Creek Improvement District which conveniently self-appointed new members. Because Disney governed itself, and was placed outside the bounds of Florida county or city governments, the company took advantage of exclusive tax exemptions.
On Tuesday, the new board released a statement stating DEI initiatives were an attempt to divide the American people and an act of discrimination “based on gender and race, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.” According to the statement, “The announcement comes after an internal investigation into the district’s policies.”
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“The so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives were advanced during the tenure of the previous board and they were illegal and simply unamerican,” said Administrator Glenton Gilzean. “Our district will no longer participate in any attempt to divide us by race, or advance the notion that we are not created equal.” Gilzean added: “As the former head of the Central Florida Urban League, a civil rights organization, I can say definitively that our community thrives only when we work together despite our differences.”
According to the statement, Reedy Creek, under its Minority/Women Business Enterprise and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, the previous district routinely awarded contracts “based on racially and gender driven goals to businesses on the basis of their owners’ race and gender.” They also enforced gender and racial quotas “to ensure that contractors met a certain threshold of diversity,” unnecessarily spending “millions of dollars to find businesses who could comply.”
The new district further alleged in the statement that after entering a contract, Reedy Creek “aggressively monitored [the] contractor’s racial and gender practices,” wasting even more taxpayer dollars. The district said that contractors who didn’t keep up with the quotas were threatened with non-payment and disqualification from future bidding.
Disney World is just one of the more than 200 third-party companies the district board oversees that operate within the Disney World properties, including luxury homes and neighborhoods.
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