Just to set the record straight, it was not a subsidy.

When Orlando papers did the math, they showed it will cost the tax jurisdictions more to provide the services than it cost to waive the taxes and let Disney provide them to itself. Further, Disney is far from the only private town with the same arrangement; it's how Florida does it all over the state any time there's a big enough planned development, because that saves the government money.

Republicans should love this, because it proves government services privatized can cost the tax payer less.

That narrative was inconvenient to "the right" so didn't get talked about much because then the entire thing would just look astonishingly petty. And "the left" didn't really want to have to talk about how it saves towns money to privatize services. So that whole angle, swept under the rug by 'both sides'.

UPDATE

After posting this, I just saw this in Financial Times:

> Florida prepares U-turn on Disney's 'Don't Say
Gay' punishment -- Lawmakers seek compromise preserving theme park operator's right to run private government

> By Christopher Grimes in Orlando, Florida (yesterday)

Since FT is paywall, found a Reason link: https://reason.com/2022/12/02/is-florida-giving-up-its-fight...

> In other words, this looks like it was never much more than a pissing match between DeSantis and Chapek, who drew the governor's ire when he sharply criticized Florida's so-called "Don't Say Gay" law that censored discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. DeSantis signed the bill into law in March.

> Florida has hundreds of special tax districts like Reedy Creek, but DeSantis seized on Chapek's criticism and framed the whole thing as a culture war fight against a corporation that had received special privileges from the state. Chapek's criticism of the new law amounted to "provocation, and we're going to fight back," DeSantis said in April as he signed the law undoing Disney's special status.

> But most of that was a wild exaggeration. As Reason's Scott Shackford wrote in April, the special tax and governing status granted to Disney in 1967 aren't so much privileges for the corporation as they are gifts to the local governments surrounding the Walt Disney World resort. If the special status were revoked, Orange and Osceola counties would become responsible for providing mandatory public services—including basic infrastructure like water supplies and emergency services like fire departments, all of which Disney currently self-operates and self-funds within Reedy Creek—to the massive resort. It would effectively put local taxpayers on the hook for essential services that Disney used to pay for itself.

> "Any contention that DeSantis is eliminating some sort of 'special treatment' for Disney comes with it the perhaps mistaken assumption that the two counties suddenly in charge of all of this infrastructure will somehow make the park better and not worse. In reality, putting Disney parks at the mercy of two different counties with different laws will be a huge mess for everybody involved, and that's the point," Shackford wrote. "It's not about what's fair or what's best for the citizens in the area. It's about punishing political foes and centralizing government power (a very nonconservative approach) to do so."

> Friday's report that lawmakers are preparing to back down from those proposals only seems to confirm that conclusion.