Cortland proposed registering bikes, scooters and a defined class of mobility devices. The council tabled the law—and the record is more complicated than the viral claim.

Monster News · 23 October 2026

Monster News Spotlight — 23 October 2026

A claim that Cortland, New York, was about to make people license their wheelchairs sounds like a bad joke. It grew out of a real proposal—but the details matter.

In August 2025, the City of Cortland proposed replacing its bicycle code with rules covering bicycles, e-bikes, e-scooters and “electric personal assistive mobility devices,” or EPAMDs. The draft would have required city residents to register those devices before using them in public, submit identifying information and a serial number, and attach a city-issued decal. Fees could be set later by council resolution. The proposal also allowed unregistered devices to be impounded, subject to an express exception for EPAMDs unless abandoned, and imposed fines for violations.

That language was broad enough to raise a legitimate accessibility question. But “wheelchair” was not the proposal’s defined category. It borrowed New York’s narrow statutory definition of an EPAMD: a self-balancing, two-wheeled device—think a Segway-style transporter—not every powered wheelchair or mobility scooter. More importantly, at the August 19 public hearing, Cortland’s corporation counsel said devices used by people with mobility disabilities, including electric wheelchairs and mobility scooters, were excluded and would not need registration or face the proposed operating restrictions.

That clarification did not erase the drafting concern. A resident using a less conventional device, such as a Segway for a disability, asked the city to make the exemption explicit. Speakers also objected to the proposal’s fees, registration database, enforcement burden and effect on people who rely on low-cost transportation.

The council did not pass the proposal that night. The official minutes record a motion to table it. That is a postponed vote, not proof that the council formally repealed or permanently withdrew the proposal. The version currently listed in the city code is the older bicycle chapter; the public record we located does not show the 2025 draft becoming law.

What about Young Americans for Liberty?

You may have heard that Young Americans for Liberty got involved and the city dropped the plan. We could not verify that causal link in the sources we reviewed. The council minutes document residents’ objections and the decision to table the proposal, but do not attribute that outcome to YAL. Until a reliable source or primary record establishes the organization’s role—and shows what happened after the tabling—we should not state that as fact.

There is a second overstatement to avoid: the draft did not explicitly announce jail time for wheelchair use. It classified violations as violations of the city code and set fines by council resolution. New York law generally allows a court to impose up to 15 days’ imprisonment for a “violation,” but the draft itself specified a fine and did not spell out a jail term. The stronger, supportable criticism is that the proposal contemplated mandatory registration, possible fees, impoundment and penalties for covered devices, while its disability protections needed to be clearer on the page.

The lesson in the paperwork

The alarm was not invented from nothing: EPAMDs appeared in the draft, and the proposed registration language applied to them. But “Cortland required wheelchair users to buy licenses or go to jail” collapses a disputed draft, a legal definition, the city attorney’s public clarification and a tabled vote into one claim—and goes beyond what the record establishes.

The fair account is still worth spotlighting. A city proposed a registration-and-enforcement scheme broad enough to worry disabled residents and other riders. People challenged it at a public hearing. The city’s lawyer said mobility devices used by people with disabilities were exempt, but a resident asked for that protection to be written more explicitly. The council tabled the proposal. Whether the city later abandoned it, and whether YAL helped bring that about, require evidence beyond the meeting record we found.

Public rules should be clear before enforcement begins—especially when the wording touches the tools people use to move through daily life. Cortland’s episode is a reminder to read the actual draft, attend the hearing, and keep the difference between “proposed,” “tabled,” and “enacted” in the headline.

The White House promised a commission on fraud. The Justice Department wrote down a flat fee.

Monster News · 23 October 2026

On Tuesday, 20 October, in the Oval Office, the President announced a program to pay Americans for finding fraud. Beside him stood Vice President JD Vance, who chairs the administration’s anti-fraud task force; Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission; and Nick Shirley, the 24-year-old who filmed childcare centres in Minnesota and whose video the administration has credited as the basis for cutting federal funding to that state.

Before the announcement was over, Shirley had been handed a cheque for $10,000.

The President described what people would get. “And if it’s $10 billion, $200 billion, $400 billion, we’re giving a 1 percent commission to that person,” he said, according to the published transcript of the remarks. Reporters heard the figure described as an unlimited 1% commission on the fraud reported. The President also said who would decide: “I will be the arbitrator of all of these decisions. I will be very generous, believe me. We’re not looking to save on that.”

The Justice Department described the program differently, in writing, the same day.

What was written

The Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program — WHIP — is run by DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. It is a three-year pilot, funded by a $25 million commitment from the Treasury. DOJ states that it rests on its authority under 28 U.S.C. § 530C(b)(1)(L), and that it follows Directive 26-12 of 1 October, which told division leadership to design programs that pay people — including people who took part in the misconduct — to bring forward credible information about fraud.

What it actually pays, per DOJ’s published guidance and the legal analyses that followed within a day:

• $10,000 to $30,000 for each distinct tip — a fixed range, not a percentage of anything.
• Paid at charging, when DOJ files and unseals an indictment, an information, or a criminal complaint. Not at conviction. Not at recovery. Not after appeal.
• At DOJ’s “sole discretion,” in the department’s own words.
• No minimum loss threshold. A scheme that took $40,000 qualifies exactly as a scheme that took $40 million does — same range.

Coverage is federal health care offences and fraud against programs run by Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Veterans Affairs and the Small Business Administration. DOJ says it will prioritise hospice, home health care, day care and special services fraud. Only individuals can claim. The information must be original, given in writing, and the tipster must cooperate. People who meaningfully took part in the crime are ineligible, though minimal participants may be considered at DOJ’s discretion. Compliance officers, auditors, officers and directors are generally shut out — with exceptions, including an imminent-harm exception and one that opens after 120 days have passed since an internal report.

So: two descriptions of one program, four days apart in public understanding. A percentage with no ceiling, according to the podium. A capped finder’s fee, according to the paper.

Both can be true at once only if they are two different things — an announced intention to pay 1%, and an existing pilot that pays $30,000 at most. What has been created so far is the second. Monster News could find no bill in Congress that writes the 1% into law. As of this writing, the 1% is a promise made in a room, and the $10,000 to $30,000 is the policy that exists.

What the law already pays

This is where the announcement becomes more interesting than the coverage of it, and less generous than it sounds.

The United States has run a fraud bounty since 1863. The False Claims Act lets a private person bring suit on the government’s behalf — a qui tam action — and, if money is recovered, the court awards that person 15% to 30% of it: 15% to 25% where the government takes over the case, and 25% to 30% where it declines and the whistleblower carries it alone (31 U.S.C. § 3730(d)). The statute forbids retaliation against an employee who files (§ 3730(h)), requires the case to be filed under seal so the government can investigate quietly, and bars copycat suits on information already public (§ 3730(e)(4)). Illinois has its own version, the Illinois False Claims Act, 740 ILCS 175, paying the same 15% to 30% on state money — including Medicaid.

Put the numbers beside each other. A $5 million scheme:

• Promised at the podium: 1% — $50,000.
• Available under the written pilot: $30,000, paid when charges are filed.
• Available under the 1863 statute: $750,000 to $1,500,000, paid out of the recovery, with a court setting the amount and a statute protecting the claimant’s job.

That is not a small difference in design. It is a different theory of what a tip is worth.

The case for it — and it is a strong one

The argument for paying people to hunt fraud does not depend on the 1% figure, and it deserves to be stated at its best, because it is the reason this program exists and the reason it will probably find things.

Existing rewards arrive too late to change behaviour. A qui tam case is a multi-year project. It needs a lawyer willing to front costs. It sits under seal. The relator’s share lands after resolution, forfeiture and appeal — often five to seven years after the tip. A program that pays $10,000 six weeks after an indictment changes the arithmetic for the person who is deciding whether to make a phone call this month. The Justice Department frames this as the program’s central distinction, and it is a real one.

It reaches the fraud that inspectors general cannot see. State agencies administer federal money through thousands of small providers — day care centres, home health agencies, hospice operators, job-training contractors. Oversight is a sampling exercise. Nick Shirley walked into childcare centres with a camera and asked questions that a desk audit does not ask, and though the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families called parts of his video misleading and exaggerated, one Minneapolis woman whose centre he profiled later pleaded guilty to fraud. One viral video producing one guilty plea in one state is not proof of systemic rot. It is proof that the inspection model misses things a determined outsider can find.

It is the model that already works elsewhere. The IRS pays 15% to 30% of collected proceeds above $2 million under § 7623. The SEC pays 10% to 30% under § 21F. Both programs exist because Congress concluded that insider knowledge does not surface on its own, and that the public recovers more with a bounty than without one. The administration is extending a proven tool to a category of fraud — health care and benefits — where the losses are enormous and the whistleblowers are often the only witnesses.

And the no-minimum-loss rule is quietly the most interesting part. Because there is no threshold, the program is aimed at small local schemes, not just headline defendants. A rural county with a hospice agency billing for patients who are not dying is precisely the target. So is a daycare that invoices for children who never attend. The program pays the same $10,000 for finding one of those as for finding a national chain — and in a county of 16,000 people, one of those is the whole story.

On that reading, the program is not a gimmick. It is an attempt to crowdsource the audit function, and it may well work.

What the structure does that the argument doesn’t

Three things in the written program undercut the case being made for it at the podium.

Payment is severed from recovery. The fee follows charges, not money. A tip that produces an indictment which later collapses still pays. A scheme that is charged and never recovers a dollar still pays. The old statute ties the reward to what the public actually gets back; this one ties it to a prosecutor’s decision to file — which is a lower, faster and more discretionary event. That is the source of its speed, and also the reason it can pay for accusations rather than results.

Discretion is the whole mechanism. “Sole discretion” is DOJ’s phrase. The President’s phrase was that he would be the arbitrator, and that he would be very generous. A bounty that a named official decides case by case, for a program in a department he leads, is not a statutory entitlement — it is a grant. That is not automatically corrupt. It is, however, a different thing from the False Claims Act, where a judge fixes the percentage by formula and the claimant can appeal. For a program whose purpose is to make reporting safe and predictable, discretion is the weak point: it means the reward depends on who is deciding, and it can be withdrawn from the next person who asks.

The road not taken has a trap in it. A person who suspects fraud now has three doors: the DOJ tip line, a qui tam lawyer, or nothing. The program tells them nothing about how a WHIP submission interacts with a later False Claims Act suit. Filing with the government can amount to a public disclosure that bars a qui tam claim under § 3730(e)(4); the first-to-file rule can hand the case to whoever filed first. For a $5 million scheme, a $10,000 to $30,000 tip fee is a rounding error against a potential $750,000 relator share — and a person who takes the fast money without asking may be trading away the larger claim. The guidance does not warn them. Nothing in the announcement did either.

There is also the matter of what the incentive does to the accused. The program pays before anyone is convicted, at DOJ’s discretion, for information that prosecutors find credible. Fraud is real, and so are mistaken and malicious accusations against small providers who cannot afford to defend themselves. The False Claims Act’s answer to that is a court and a seal. This program’s answer is a prosecutor’s charging decision.

If you think you have found fraud

Monster News is not a law firm and cannot advise you. What follows is what the public record shows, so you can ask better questions.

If the money involved is federal — Medicare, Medicaid, daycare assistance, housing, veterans’ programs, farm programs — you may have a claim under the False Claims Act, and the share is 15% to 30% of what is recovered. If it is state money, the Illinois False Claims Act applies, at the same percentages. Those claims take years and generally need a lawyer who works on contingency. Before you sign anything with a tip broker or a “fraud club,” ask what happens to your qui tam rights, who gets the fee, and whether your identity stays sealed.

If you want the faster route, DOJ’s program pays $10,000 to $30,000 per tip at charging, at its discretion, and requires original information in writing and cooperation. Both doors can be considered. They are not the same door, and the difference is measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars on a mid-sized case.

And if what you have is a suspicion and a camera, the last four days have shown both halves of the truth: that an outsider can find what an agency missed, and that the reward for finding it may be smaller, later and more conditional than the person who thanked you on television said it would be.

The question

The interesting question is not whether America should pay people to find fraud. It already does, and has since Lincoln. The question is whether a bounty should be a statute with a formula, a seal and a retaliation clause — or a pilot with a ceiling, a pot of $25 million, and one man’s discretion.

The podium promised the first. The paperwork created the second. If the 1% is real, it needs a bill, and the bill needs to say what happens to the person who reported first, what protects them afterwards, and what happens when the accusation is wrong.

Until then, the strongest incentive in American fraud law remains the one that has been on the books for 163 years, and it pays fifteen to thirty times what the new program does.

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Sources: Reuters, 20 October 2026 (announcement, figures, quotations); U.S. Department of Justice, Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program announcement and guidance, 20 October 2026; Directive 26-12, 1 October 2026; Ballard Spahr legal alert, 21 October 2026 (program mechanics, 28 U.S.C. § 530C(b)(1)(L), eligibility); The Hill, 20 October 2026; KSL, 21 October 2026; 31 U.S.C. § 3730; 740 ILCS 175; 26 U.S.C. § 7623; 15 U.S.C. § 78u-6.

By Ronnie Paul · Monster News · October 20, 2026

Firsthand account and commentary.

I called HUD looking for accountability. I came away still trying to find the person responsible for it.

Yolanda Sue Miller
312-913-8580
yolanda.s.miller@hud.gov
Ralph H. Metcalfe Federal Building
77 West Jackson Boulevard
Chicago, Illinois 60604

HUD personnel directed me to Yolanda S. Miller in Chicago as a point of contact concerning Wayne County Housing Authority. During our conversations, I understood her explanation to be that concerns about how the authority operates are local governance matters and that HUD’s role is limited to physical inspections or monitoring expenditures.

That is my account of what I understood her to tell me. I have requested written clarification.

The distinction matters because my complaints concern federal requirements governing public housing — not simply whether I agree with a local administrator’s decisions.

Four notices. Four requests. No hearing.

A housing resident received four successive notices seeking to terminate his public-housing tenancy:

Termination notice	Written grievance request
April 16, 2026	April 19, 2026
July 8, 2026	July 26, 2026
July 27, 2026	August 5, 2026
August 24, 2026	September 2, 2026

I helped prepare those requests as the resident’s designated representative. He also submitted a separate institutional-harassment grievance dated August 27, expressly challenging the recurring failure to provide meaningful review.

This resident received no grievance hearing or written determination resolving these requests. I likewise received no responsive hearing notice, grievance decision, or written exclusion determination.

For the September 2 grievance request submission, we have more than a recollection. Contemporaneous messages identify the packet and planned delivery. The resident anticipated foul play and subsequently confirmed completion and sent a video showing the papers being deposited into the central-office drop box as required by the authority.

WCHA then filed an eviction lawsuit alleging that his lease had terminated and that he unlawfully remained in possession. It seeks possession, additional rent, willful-holdover damages, attorney fees, and costs. His first scheduled appearance is October 28.

Those allegations remain for the court to decide. But the administrative question already exists: what happened to the requested grievance process?

Federal requirements are not just local preferences

HUD’s regulation says that when a grievance hearing is required and timely requested as in this case, the tenancy cannot terminate until the grievance process is completed — even if the state notice period has expired.

A separate provision specifies what the termination notice must say when a housing authority elects a permitted exclusion from that process. Those are express federal requirements. 24 C.F.R. § 966.4(l)(3)(iv)–(v).

The August 24 notice expressly told Nathan he could request a grievance hearing. Whether WCHA complied with the governing requirements is central to his defense.

I am not asking HUD to decide the pending eviction case. I am asking who reviews allegations that an agency receiving federal housing funds is disregarding the federal procedures governing its program.

Which office owns the problem?

HUD’s responsibilities are divided, but division should not mean disappearance.

Its Office of Inspector General receives allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. OIG also expressly says routine administrative complaints belong with HUD program staff or other responsible bodies.

The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity handles discrimination complaints within its jurisdiction. Not every failure to provide a grievance hearing is automatically a discrimination case.

HUD also has Public and Indian Housing program staff and field-office responsibilities. Its published guidance assigns field offices monitoring functions beyond physical inspections.

There is a narrower rule under which qualifying small rural authorities receive physical-condition-only assessments. But a limited assessment score is not an exemption from federal grievance obligations.

That leaves a straightforward question for Ms. Yolanda Sue Miller and HUD:

Who receives the evidence, reviews compliance, and determines whether corrective action is necessary? Do we simply keep forking over federal tax payer money to an agency that repeatedly defies the federal regulations that govern the disbursement of these very funds?

Residents need a responsible contact

Yolanda S. Miller
HUD employee identified to me as a contact concerning WCHA. Her precise title, portfolio responsibilities, and supervisory chain have been requested in writing.

HUD Chicago Regional Office
Ralph H. Metcalfe Federal Building
77 West Jackson Boulevard
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Telephone: 312-353-6236

Residents seeking assistance should describe their own documented concern, identify relevant dates and prior submissions, and request referral to the official responsible for the applicable federal requirement. Ask for written acknowledgment, a tracking number if available, and the receiving office’s contact information.

I have reported concerns since February with no response from HUD in any form or fashion. I have now asked Ms. Miller to clarify her explanation and identify the appropriate oversight officials.

Federal protections mean little to a resident facing eviction if no one can explain who is responsible for reviewing alleged violations. Residents deserve an answer that identifies an office, a responsible person, and a process.

Monster News HUD Interaction Summary

I am a disabled veteran, and in my time in the military, we developed this practice that we referred to as shamming. The civilian sector, they basically call it busy work. It’s the process of looking like you’re doing something to avoid doing the horrible things that no one wants to do. We got really good at it. It’s government work, after all. We would go as far as scheduling surgeries to certain times of the year so we can be on light duty during annual tasks we wanted to avoid. We’re getting paid the same whether we do it or not.

The entire conversation I had with Yolanda seemed to be laced with the same language we would use to get out of work and left me with this interpretation of shamming or busy work. You know, it’s a little mix of, I don’t understand, dash of incompetence, let me check with my higher ups, Oh, I’m not certain whose that is. You know, the shifting responsibilities game. Typical public employee type attitude. I’m not alone in this opinion. HUD OIG shares this opinion. They just phrase it a little more tactful and respectful than I did, do, and will most likely continue to do.

OIG’s findings about HUD personnel failing to perform oversight!

May 30, 2023 — Report 2023-CH-0004: OIG found field offices inconsistently checked correction of life-threatening deficiencies and generally did not monitor required PHA self-inspections. In its FY 2025 management-challenges report, issued October 2024, OIG continued questioning whether HUD had demonstrated implementation of the corrective protocol.

• https://www.oversight.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/2023-06/2023-CH-0004.pdf

 

February 7, 2022 — Report 2022-BO-0001: OIG found PIH failed to conduct required civil-rights front-end reviews and did not believe it was responsible for them. Fifteen surveyed field offices reported not reviewing PHA reasonable-accommodation policies; some relied on FHEO instead.

• https://www.hudoig.gov/sites/default/files/2024-02/2022-BO-0001.pdf

 

So monster news leaves you with this, if you ever find yourself trying to get someone at HUD to do their actual job, be assertive and never take no for an answer. Get names, positions, request for your concerns to be forwarded. Get their email and document your interactions with a follow up for clarification. Or even better, start your own media outlet and put these people on blast until accountability comes calling!

Response and corrections: This article recounts my direct conversations and the records I have reviewed. I have requested written clarification from Ms. Miller. Any response will be added as an update, and substantiated factual inaccuracies will be corrected.