Carolina Journal
Staff Report
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign is staunchly defending his wife Yolanda Hill’s now-closed nonprofit, Balanced Nutrition Inc., following recent allegations of financial and operational irregularities leveled by the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.
The state agency made the claims following an investigation that launched after Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign kicked off in April 2023. Robinson faces NC Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, who is endorsed by outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper.
The DHHS report suggests that BNI failed to comply with several administrative and financial guidelines, leading to the state’s decision to order the business to pay $132,000 back to the state in disallowed expense claims, including part of Hill’s salary. The agency also sent BNI a “Notice of Serious Deficiency” for reporting of expenditures.
Hill is appealing the order, with Robinson’s campaign team asserting that the investigation and allegations are politically motivated and timed to damage Robinson’s campaign.
“These findings are politically motivated at the core,” said Robinson’s campaign communications director, Mike Lonergan. “Last year, an independent auditor issued a report on Balanced Nutrition, Inc. (BNI) with no material findings. Yet as soon as Mark Robinson announced his campaign for governor in April 2023, the Democrat-run state agency started moving the goalposts.”
The DHHS report accused BNI of inadequate record-keeping and failing to meet federal and state requirements.
Ahead of Hill’s official appeal, the campaign answered by releasing an independent audit report from January 2023 conducted by a Florida-based accounting firm, BAS Partners, that analyzed BNI’s paperwork using industry standard Government Auditing Standards (GAAS). An independent audit is a federal requirement for nonprofits that meet an annual funding threshold.
“In our opinion, Balanced Nutrition Inc. complied, in all material respects, with the types of compliance requirements referred to above that could have a direct and material effect on each of its major state programs for the year ended December 31, 2021,” the audit read.
“Just as they are doing against President Trump, Democrats are weaponizing the bureaucracy to grind a political ax against their opponents,” said Lonergan. “Needless to say, BNI is aware of these findings, vehemently disagrees with them, and is looking forward to challenging them on appeal.”
Hill filed notice with NCDHHS on April 30 that she would be closing her BNI business where she was a contractor with the state government sponsoring daycare facilities in the federal Child and Adult Care Food Program for nearly two decades.
Shortly before she notified the government that BNI was closing, Hill said in interview with a Raleigh television news station that she was being targeted by NCDHHS because of her husband’s Republican campaign for governor. She alleged that the then-lead investigator of BNI was circulating pictures of her and Robinson taken from her personal Facebook page to link her to the outspoken Stein opponent.
“She used her state cell phone to send that picture to her colleagues on their state cell phones, telling them: ‘Look who this is. Look who her husband is. Her husband is Mark Robinson,” Hill alleged to WRAL in April.
In Robinson’s autobiography, “We are the Majority: The Life and Passions of a Patriot,” he detailed his 2018 work with his wife’s Greensboro business after he was laid off from a furniture manufacturer.
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