The Blame-Someone-Else Game

The Robinson for Governor campaign’s spokes-parrot knows only two phrases: “Old News” and “Democrat Trick.”   In the debate over the NC DHHS probe of Balanced Nutrition – Mark Robinson and Yolanda Hill’s family business — the former has gotten a lot of use, but the latter seems to be the go-to squawk these days. 

Team Robinson is apparently not even considering a strategy of, say, admitting mistakes were made and working to straighten things out.  A lot of the “evidence” in this case involves things like documents bearing Yolanda Hill‘s signature containing incorrect / false information and a lack of records being kept on Balanced Nutrition clients.  It would seem a real stretch to blame any stuff like that on anyone but Yolanda Hill and her team at Balanced Nutrition.  But it sure does appear the Robinson campaign is going to give it the ol’ college try.

In the course of trying to shut down Balanced Nutrition in April – just prior to a routine quarterly financial review by DHHS – Yolanda Hill took THIS route:

[…] In an interview with WRAL on Thursday, Hill alleged that she and her organization had also received undue scrutiny from a North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services employee. Hill purported that the attention was due in part to her connection to Robinson.

Balanced Nutrition helps adult or child care centers in the Triad area that qualify for federal food subsidies. The DHHS regulates health-related nonprofits that participate in federal programs. The DHHS is run by an appointee of Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat. Robinson is a right-wing Republican who has the backing of former President Donald Trump.

According to Hill, a DHHS employee in February 2023 circulated to colleagues Hill’s social media photos showing her next to Robinson. “She screenshot a picture from my personal Facebook page,” Hill said. “I didn’t know her, didn’t know personally. She was not a friend of mine.”

Hill added: “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.” The employee told colleagues that Hill had misled her about her husband’s identity, Hill alleged.

The person who purportedly circulated those images was DHHS Child Nutrition Assistant Joyce Bonner, according to Hill. Bonner was later in charge of reviewing Balanced Nutrition. The case was assigned to a different specialist in March 2023, DHHS said.

USDA’s rules prohibit discrimination on the grounds of political beliefs. Hill thinks Bonner’s conduct violated that rule.

Bonner didn’t respond to requests for comment. Kelly Haight Conner, a DHHS spokesperson, said the agency operated “under normal federal requirements in regard to scheduled compliance reviews for Balanced Nutrition.”[…]

Okay. So, back in April, it was ALL Joyce Bonner‘s fault.

So, now here we are in August 2024.  Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial nominee had THIS to say in Asheville prior to President Trump’s speech:

[“…] And we have got to stop the weaponization of our government. It is dangerous. My wife and I have felt the sting of it. My wife ran a successful business for almost 10 years and it wasn’t until some folks inside of that business who don’t like me, found out who I was and then the games began, the harassment began and now we find out that the my opponent’s wife is deeply embedded into the very agency that holds sway over my wife’s business. You see what we see here with the weaponization of government. It does not jive with being able to have a good economy. Why? Because people should be able to work and earn a living and run a business without fear of Reprisal from their own government. […]

So, has Joyce Bonner now been acquitted of all blame?  Or is she now an accomplice of Anna Harris Stein in the Great Smear of Yolanda Hill?  My, how stories change as the heat gets turned up.

We made a few phone calls to try and make some sense of this. A DHHS spokeswoman confirmed for us that Mrs. Stein does work for the department but does not now have and never has had contact with CACFP – the federal program that funded Hill’s now-shuttered business – nor Balanced Nutrition itself.

Here’s what else we got from DHHS:

Anna Stein

-Title/Division: Agency Legal Consultant at DPH (Through Temporary Solutions), with a Oct. 9, 2023 start date

-Temporary part-time

-Nature of work/capacity of work: Provide legal consultation on policy analysis related to various Chronic Disease and Injury programs subject matter areas.

Mrs. Stein was hired by the NCDHHS Division of Public Health as a legal consultant in the Chronic Disease & Injury section and worked predominantly on tobacco prevention and smoking cessation efforts. She transitioned to being a temporary, hourly worker through OSHR’s Temporary Solutions on Oct. 9, 2023. Her duties as a temporary employee have been limited to supporting the team developing a health care ‘toolkit’ for use by jails and detention centers. On average, she works 10 hours or less each week. Her work/temporary employment will end by Sept. 9, 2024.[….]

Okay, so let’s see if we can follow the, um, “logic” being utilized by Team Robinson.  Are we to believe that Joyce Bonner AND Anna Stein forced Yolanda Hill to fail to adhere to regulations she promised to abide by in documents she signed?

Are we to believe that Ms. Bonner and Mrs. Stein caused Ms. Hill to fail to retain records of her financial dealings with Balanced Nutrition clients?

Are we to believe that Ms. Bonner and Mrs. Stein forced Ms. Hill to ignore regulations requiring prior permission before putting family members on the payroll?

Are we expected to believe Ms. Bonner and Mrs. Stein forced Ms. Hill to report erroneous / incorrect financial data on federal and state documents for the same tax year?

All of the above circumstances are documented in DHHS and Balanced Nutrition documents we previously reported on.

A review of records indicate Balanced Nutrition began receiving scrutiny from NC DHHS as early as 2018.  Mark Robinson was not elected until 2020.

Balanced Nutrition got placed on the state’s official DO NOT PAY list in July 2021.  (That was six months into Robinson’s first year in office.). The reasoning behind that move was stated as “failing to turn in reports.”  Even after being placed on the list, Balanced Nutrition still got paid. 

All indications are the decision was based on reviews of and interaction with Balanced Nutrition dating back to 2020 and possibly earlier.   (Mrs. Stein’s start date in her current post was October 2023.)

OH, and let’s not forget this audit that the spokes-parrot keeps squawking about.   We wrote about it in 2023.  It was an audit of the tax year 2021 that was completed in January 2023. It was also an audit of financial position — which ensures everything is on the right line item on the financial statements.  The review of ten clients over a three month period – which produced the $132,000-plus assessment – is more of a forensic approach to auditing.  Forensic audits – matching actual assets to receipts and invoices – is what catches actual wrong-doing.  It’s expensive and time-consuming.  So, folks tend to only review a sampling of accounts or take other cost-saving measures.

Also, the numbers in the audit the spokes-parrot loves so much don’t appear to match what Balanced Nutrition submitted to the IRS that same year. 

So, it’s utterly ridiculous to use this audit of financial statements from 2021 to dispute forensic audit findings from the first quarter of 2024.

To the casual observer, Balanced Nutrition‘s relationship with NC DHHS has been marked by a plethora of second chances on a lot of issues.  There’s hardly a case for some iron-fisted crackdown on Hill, Robinson and Balanced Nutrition.