Like I said, great that Disney has been responsible, but with how broad Disney's power was, they could've easily done a lot of things really bad, too. I mean hell, they had the ability to build a Nuclear plant on site if they wanted to. That's simply too much power for a company to have over such a large area.
This is where the idea of agreements made in "good faith" come into play.
As we've seen in other parts of the US government a lot of laws and agreements weren't often narrowed down to extreme specifics or shored up against blatant abuse because it wasn't thought that such things could happen. I'm sure it was assumed such people specifically seeking office to exploit such gaps, which could just as easily be used for the betterment of people, would've never made it past the voting block. Times have changed, however.
Unless I'm misunderstanding the point of the Board here, but wasn't the original design so that Disney could do its thing and the Board just double checked it was within the State's guidelines? I'm simplifying but I think that was the idea?
Even if they wanted to build a nuclear plant it wasn't like it would've been some hobby project with little to no regulation. Considering Hulk's power requirements at IoA and Universal needing to build their own turbines to power a single ride, needing to build a nuclear plant for the Disney's original plans doesn't seem so out there. And even then it was a "we need this ability just in case" not "we're absolutely going to use this ability." Again, powers given over in good faith during a different time period.
Now could we argue that perhaps in 'modern' times the agreement could be looked at and modified to be within with Disney's current day-to-day requirements? I suppose so, although again, why now? I mean up until this situation was escalated by a particular individual—I'm aware of how there's a want to avoid the topic and focus
only on the current Board but that is nearly impossible to do because we wouldn't even be here if not for that for various reasons—it really wasn't an issue. Rather, it would have to be demonstrated that Disney's actions over the years were decidedly different than any one of the other special districts in the state and as such, the district deserves the microscopic attention it's currently receiving.
All that aside, it's hard to fault Disney for what they did right before the switch. First, I don't believe it would've been done unless they didn't think there was any other way. While it's true that a single company shouldn't have that much power, Disney didn't do anything like this until now.
The second thing is that Disney has do what's best in the interest of itself, investors, other stakeholders, and guests. Considering the new Board's stated intentions about controlling Disney's content even before taking over, it's very telling that the company found the threat credible enough to do this to begin with, at least to me. Disney's stakeholders have to be more than aware of all the risks they're taking by doing this.
The third thing is that even though those emails may make Disney look bad one thing to remember is that they were hand-picked to do so by the current Board's lawyers. Personally I'd like to see the full email chain containing all the events leading up to those emails to understand the whole story, the motivations behind each of these actions.
How it all plays out in court is anyone's game but I wouldn't be surprised if Disney's side pushed hard on why these actions were even necessary. I know it's been mentioned that this is unusual for a company to do such things but this entire situation is unusual. Iger's already commented that these actions are "anti-Florida" and "anti-business" and it's not like they don't have examples by now.
At the end of the day there is a lot more than Disney's special district on the line. I do wonder if Universal and the other parks are watching carefully while taking notes as Disney works this out?