DeSantis Board Nixes Free Disney Passes and Discounts for Employees, in Move Sure to Win the Governor Major Popularity Points

Earlier this month, Florida governor Ron DeSantis urged Disney to drop its lawsuit against him and the state, saying that he had “moved on” and the company should too. Unfortunately for the governor, Disney did not act on his recommendation, which probably had something to with the fact that he has spent more than a year attacking the company for speaking out against his “Don’t Say Gay” law, stripping Disney of control of its special district, and threatening to build a prison complex next to its park. It’s also very possible that the company did not actually believe DeSantis and his allies had actually “moved on”—and a recent move by the board he installed earlier this year suggests some people certainly have not!

Yes, on Monday the people handpicked by DeSantis to oversee Disney’s former governing district—which had for decades been controlled by Disney itself—asked the state inspector general to investigate the distribution of free season passes and discounts to district employees that it claims were part of a “scheme to funnel…taxpayer dollars“ to the company. In a release, the DeSantis-backed board said that roughly $2.5 million in discounts, passes, and other perks had been given to district employees and their families last year. The release noted that “immediately upon discovering the scheme,” the board “set in motion plans to eliminate it.”

Words like scheme, funnel, and taxpayer dollars might make it sound like something nefarious was afoot. However, as Richard Foglesong, a Rollins College professor emeritus who literally wrote a book about Disney governance, told Fortune, it sounds like what was actually going on was not a tax scam but a standard employee benefit program, like how a university might give free passes to sporting events to its professors.

Meanwhile, on the topic of schemes and ethics, Fortune writes:

The complaint from the DeSantis appointees comes as the district administrator they appointed last May faces an ethics dilemma of his own. Glen Gilzean, who earns $400,000 annually in his new job, also is chair of the Florida Commission on Ethics. He can’t simultaneously be a commission board member and work for the district because the commission prohibits public employees from serving on its board, a commission attorney said last week in a legal opinion.

Anyway, we’re sure this move to go after employee perks will only further endear DeSantis not only to Floridians but to all Americans, and win him major popularity points at the polls.