Disney district continues talks over replacing employee passes

The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District is continuing to have discussions about how to replace a decades-old practice of providing Walt Disney World passes to employees.

District Chairman Martin Garcia said Wednesday the district is considering an annual “stipend” of $1,400 for employees that could be used to offset annual park fees, which for Florida residents range from $399 to $969 per person.

“If that's not enough, OK, then we'll bump that up,” Garcia said. “I also said that if we find out that it's too much, that we're not going to bump it down.”

District firefighters have questioned the change, but Garcia called the passes a “bad policy.”

He previously said the park-related benefits weren’t equitably used by employees and that the policy could be illegal.
“We understand that you had a perk that’s been taken away. We have to deal with that, OK, because we want happy employees,” Garcia said in response to a question from a district firefighter about the passes.

“Most importantly, we want to be fair to you all. You all didn't create this policy. OK, it was a bad policy, but you had nothing to do with that. And you are not the ones that should suffer from it.”

The perk was among the latest twists for the newly created Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, which succeeded the former Reedy Creek Improvement District amid a feud between Gov. Ron DeSantis and Disney.

The Reedy Creek district, created in the 1960s to provide local-government services in the Disney area, was closely aligned with the company. Disney contends in a federal lawsuit that the state retaliated against it and violated First Amendment rights because of the company’s opposition to a 2022 law that restricted instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation in schools.

The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District has countered with a state lawsuit that questions development agreements that Disney reached with the former Reedy Creek board.

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