More Money, More Problems. (More forms, too.)
We’ve put together more than 30 stories over the past year about Greensboro-
based Balanced Nutrition. Balanced Nutrition, if you haven’t heard, is the family business for Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and his wife Yolanda Hill.
Balanced Nutrition is an independent contractor working for the state Department of Health and Human Services
(NCDHHS) to distribute tax dollars to daycare centers as reimbursement for lunches they provide their attendees. (It’s an interesting career choice for a couple marketing themselves as the First Couple of North Carolina conservatism.)
Some of the concerns we’ve raised about Balanced Nutrition include:
- Apparently improper application for and reception of federal Paycheck Protection loans (which evolved into grants),
- Failure to ID family members affiliated with Balanced Nutrition and other potential conflicts-of-interest to federal tax authorities,
- Accounting records that fail to adhere to generally accepted accounting practices,
- Payroll records that don’t match what state authorities approved in preliminary budgets,
- Shoddy record keeping making it nearly impossible to determine who actually worked for the company and how much they actually got paid.
There’s one more we’d like to add to the list: Robinson, himself, failing to report income from Balanced Nutrition on his Statement of Economic Interest.
We found a preliminary budget submitted by Ms. Hill to state authorities for the program year that began in October 2018. The budget document (page 6) IDed herself and the now-lieutenant governor as the only employees of Balanced Nutrition. (Specific proposed salaries for Hill and Robinson were also detailed in the budget document.)
If you refer to the Statement of Economic Interest Mark Robinson filed with the state ethics commission in 2020, Robinson was asked to ID sources of income in excess of $5,000 for 2018. If Balanced Nutrition operated in line with the budget for that year it submitted to the state, Robinson would have been paid more than $5,000 by Balanced Nutrition in 2018.
Thus, the compensation should have been reported to the ethics commission by Robinson.
In his 2022 memoir, Robinson stated that he worked for Balanced Nutrition between the time he left his furniture company job and when he decided to run for office.
It seems like just yesterday when Robinson had to revise his ethics forms to ID his wife’s involvement with some charter school boards. Or when WRAL had to remind him about paying property taxes.
The sad part is that a lot of people will probably pay little attention to this. Fat Mark just tells people what he thinks they want to hear and is banking on that alone. Folwell is a lot more qualified and would do a great job.
The bomb is ticking on this. ONCE he’s the nominee, his fellow republicans and dems will pounce to elect Stein. The press, media, feds will have a field day. He won’t last 7 days past the coronation as nominee.
I do hope votes aren’t lost on this candidate but I know/been invited to fundraisers by many well-meaning individuals I know that seem to be blinded by ‘his conservatism’.
Too many people are not tuned in yet to the election. Come primary day I fear most will have heard few great soundbites and ignore the potential baggage. Folwell is a far better candidate but I am concerned his lower profile will hurt him.
The story at the post below shows how easy it is to defraud the huge government apparatus.
I’m not saying the Robinson’s are like Yamanaka Mello. Instead, I’m saying placing one’s self as a middleman between a govt agency and businesses receiving govt funding affords someone an amazing opportunity to rip off the taxpayers due to the lack of oversight.
Therefore, the Robinson’s need to be ultra transparent. It doesn’t sound like they have been.
Even if no fraud is involved in their Balanced Nutrition business, the very idea of a conservative willfully profiting from a govt program tells me one important fact: Mark and Yolanda are not conservatives at all.
https://x.com/collinrugg/status/1745509284769882233?s=46