Clay County Commissioner James Renninger has faced sharp criticism online in the days since he defended his vote to cut the county’s disabled veteran solid waste exemption from 100% to 50% by invoking a veteran he knew who, he said, was “a hundred percent totally and permanently disabled” while flying for FedEx and earning $400,000 a year.
A review of VA disability rules, along with the best available national fraud data, shows Renninger’s anecdote doesn’t actually describe abuse of the system as it’s currently structured — and that the kind of widespread fraud his remarks imply is statistically unlikely, based on available federal data.
At the same time, the debate he’s gesturing toward — how long a “permanent” disability rating should go unreviewed — is a real and long-running one in veterans policy, not something he invented.
What The Vote Actually Does
The commission’s decision reduces the county’s solid waste/garbage fee exemption for disabled veterans from a full waiver to a 50% discount, meaning affected veterans will now owe $179 per year.
County records reviewed by CN&V show a gap between two official counts of how many people the change affects: county staff has cited roughly 3,700 current exemption holders, while the Property Appraiser’s rolls show 4,565 fully exempt disabled-veteran parcels — a discrepancy staff has attributed to the exemption being tracked separately across offices.
Depending on the number of Clay County residents impacted, the exemption reduction could generate between $600,000 and $800,000 in additional funds for the county.
Two Kinds of “100% Disabled”
Renninger’s comments blur a distinction that turns out to be central to whether his example describes a loophole or simply how the VA benefit is designed to work. The VA recognizes two separate paths to full disability compensation, and only one of them restricts how much a veteran can earn.
Schedular 100% Rating:
This rating is based on the severity of a veteran’s service-connected medical conditions and is determined using VA’s rating tables. If those conditions combine to 100%, the veteran receives full compensation — with no restriction on income or employment. A veteran with a schedular 100% rating can work full-time, run a business, or earn any amount of money without affecting the benefit.
TDIU — Total Disability Based on Individual Unemployability:
This is a different benefit that pays veterans at the 100% rate even when their combined disability rating is lower than 100%, on the basis that their conditions prevent them from holding steady, meaningful work. To qualify on the standard track, a veteran generally needs one condition rated at 60% or higher, or multiple conditions that combine to 70%, with at least one rated 40% or higher.
Unlike the schedular rating, TDIU comes with a real employment test: the VA requires that the veteran be unable to secure “substantially gainful employment,” generally meaning steady work above the poverty line. Earning $400,000 a year as a commercial airline pilot would not meet that standard — TDIU recipients are limited to marginal or “sheltered” work, not high-earning careers.
In plain terms: the FedEx pilot scenario Renninger described is only “abusing the system” if the veteran was collecting TDIU while working full-time at a high salary, something VA rules don’t allow.
If, as Renninger said, the individual carried a “Permanent and Total” schedular 100% rating, there is no income restriction to violate, and receiving both the compensation and the salary is not a rules violation under the program as currently written.
Technically, He’s Not Wrong
Even so, Renninger’s remarks touch on a debate that is real, even if it doesn’t map cleanly onto the vote he cast. Not every 100% rating is designated “Permanent and Total” (P&T) — a status meant to signal VA has determined a condition is both total and unlikely to ever improve.
Ratings that lack that P&T protection remain subject to periodic reassessment, and the VA has floated proposed 2026 changes to how disabilities — particularly mental health conditions — are evaluated going forward. Those changes are still proposals, not final rules, but they reflect a live conversation inside VA and among veterans’ advocates about how ratings are assigned and reviewed.
Renninger’s framing that “the pendulum has swung” and that scrutiny of the system is increasing isn’t manufactured — it echoes a genuine, ongoing federal policy discussion, even though that discussion is happening at the VA level, not chiefly in Congress as he suggested.
How Likely Is Widespread Fraud, Actually?
To test whether Renninger’s example reflects a broader pattern, CN&V applied the best available national fraud-detection data to Clay County’s own exemption numbers.
VA Office of Inspector General data cited by the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), a veterans service organization, shows fewer than 200 fraud convictions against the nearly 3 million claims VA processes annually — a rate of roughly 0.01%, or one one-hundredth of one percent.
A separate estimate, drawn from the VA OIG’s roughly 63 annual fraud investigations involving 6.9 million beneficiaries, yields an even lower rate of about 0.001%.
Applying either rate to Clay County’s exemption population produces a predicted fraud count of less than one person:
4,565 exemption holders (Property Appraiser count) × 0.0001 (OIG conviction rate) ≈ 0.5 people
3,700 exemption holders (county staff count) × 0.0001 ≈ 0.4 people
Using the lower 0.001% investigation-rate figure, the predicted count drops to roughly 0.05 people at the higher parcel count
In other words: if Clay County’s disabled veterans defraud the VA at the same rate documented nationally, the math predicts statistically close to zero fraudulent cases among local exemption holders — not the kind of widespread abuse that would justify a blanket policy change affecting every recipient.
That said, this comparison comes with real caveats. Conviction and investigation rates measure how much fraud gets caught, not necessarily how much occurs — a distinction a 2025 Washington Post investigation raised directly, arguing true fraud prevalence is likely undercounted because it is difficult to detect and under-resourced to investigate.
National rates also may not translate precisely to a single county’s population, particularly one as small as Clay County’s exemption pool. Even accounting for that uncertainty, however, nothing in the available data suggests fraud anywhere near the scale implied by treating one anecdote as representative.
And the fraud data that does exist doesn’t distinguish between legitimate schedular high-earners, like Renninger’s FedEx pilot example, and actual rule violations, meaning even a “true” fraud count wouldn’t capture the scenario he described in the first place.
Renninger’s Response
CN&V reached out to Commissioner Renninger with questions about the scope of the issue he described, but did not receive a response.
County Commission Enacts Stormwater Tax, Reduces Veteran Exemption For Garbage
The Board of County Commissioners voted Tuesday to enact a newly proposed stormwater fee. Hundreds of Clay County citizens filled the meeting room, an overflow room, the lobby of the building, and much of the parking lot to speak against the new tax.
What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that military service exposes you to a multitude of hazards that even police aren't commonly subjected to. Many people think of combat injuries, but that's just a fraction of the sort of disabling injuries veterans can have. For example, during my time in the military, I was tasked with burning large amounts of plastic in an incinerator, which produced clouds of toxic smoke that I had no choice but to breathe. We weren't provided any protection, and this wasn't in a combat environment, just a routine procedure as part of our job.
This kind of exposure isn't new, and it isn't rare. Agent Orange and burn pits followed the same pattern: veterans got sick, the VA denied claims for years, and only much later was the connection to service officially recognized. Toxic exposure, traumatic brain injury, hearing loss and tinnitus, sleep disorders... none of these show up on the outside, and many don't even show symptoms until years after service. That delay is part of why so many people are quick to doubt these claims in the first place.
But it's not just physical exposure. After a terrorist attack hit our barracks, and after witnessing its aftermath, I developed severe anxiety and panic attacks that can make it hard to even leave the house. People often say things like "just don't be anxious" or "it's all in your head," but the trauma is real. Most people who saw me wouldn't guess anything was wrong. What looks like a routine situation to someone else, like a job interview or a doctor's appointment, can put me into full fight-or-flight: my mind goes blank, my heart races, and all I want to do is get out of the room.
So before assuming that a veteran who "looks fine" doesn't deserve their benefits, consider that some of the most serious wounds of service are the ones you can't see. Judging who "deserves" support based on appearance alone gets it backwards almost every time.
I thought Renninger’s comments were completely inappropriate. I don’t know what is going on with the people on the Board these last couple rounds but we are scraping the bottom of the barrel here.