Report: Balanced Nutrition DONATED to 2020 Mark Robinson LtGov campaign
That’s the finding of a NC State Board of Elections ‘Compliance Examination Memorandum’ dated September 23, 2024 (but only made public this week). A complaint spurring this action was filed in February 2021 about the 2020 Robinson campaign’s finances.
Why is this significant? If you’ve been a longtime reader of The Haymaker, you would know that Balanced Nutrition was a non-profit controlled by Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and his wife Yolanda Hill.
According to taxing authorities, non-profits like this are not allowed under the law to make contributions to political campaigns. Any and all revenue possessed / controlled by Balanced Nutrition was taxpayer funds. The money originated with the US Department of Agriculture which transferred it to the NC Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS).
NCDHHS was responsible for managing this money and allocating it as-needed to program contractors. Balanced Nutrition was shuttered earlier this year by Yolanda Hill in the wake of scrutiny by our site and other media sources, and an inquiry by NC DHHS.
A ‘settlement agreement’ between the Robinson campaign and the state board of elections was signed on December 6 of this year. This agreement was meant to settle the issues with the 2020 Robinson campaign finances. One of the stipulations of the agreement was that the campaign would pay $35,065.52 in fines to the state.
We’d have to admit we were more than surprised to see Balanced Nutrition appear in the election board’s final report (page 7) on Robinson’s 2020 finances:
The check was cut by Balanced Nutrition before Mark Robinson was elected lieutenant governor. The record clearly shows that Yolanda Hill was in charge of Balanced Nutrition‘s finances from its start in 2017. Hill has a master’s degree in accounting — which could easily lead one to assume she knows non-profits cannot make cash donations (especially taxpayer-provided cash) to political campaigns.
Where was the oversight from NC DHHS on this? As we stated earlier, funds sent over to Balanced Nutrition from DHHS are solely earmarked for reimbursing qualified daycare centers for lunches they feed qualified children. Why did we have to wait for the state Board of Elections to uncover this?
Speaking of NC DHHS, we are still waiting for a conclusion to their review of Balanced Nutrition’s finances. The last we heard was in September when the non-profit was assessed penalties totaling approximately $132,000. (And that was just from a review of the first three months of 2024.)
