Balanced Nutrition Blames Politics for DHHS Crackdown

At a hearing next Monday, Balanced Nutrition will have a chance to refute the issues N.C. Department of Health and Human Services officials identified in a recent review—and convince the agency to back off its demand to repay more than $132,000 in federal funds. 

But according to documents obtained by The Assembly, the nonprofit run by Yolanda Hill, the wife of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, appears more interested in painting Hill as a victim of “political targeting and retaliation” than in challenging the specifics of the DHHS’ case. 

Hill announced on April 2 that she was closing Balanced Nutrition, which she’d operated since 2015, at the end of that month. The company had served as a “sponsoring organization” that helps daycares secure federal funding for health meals through the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which the DHHS oversees. 

At the time, Hill cited the “obligations” of her husband’s campaign for governor. But weeks earlier, DHHS officials informed her that they planned to conduct a “compliance review” of her operations—the third in four years. That review, completed in July, found numerous violations of federal rules. 

Among other things, it said Balanced Nutrition failed to document food purchases and income eligibility, monitor or visit the daycares it sponsored, provide them with required training, or file valid reimbursement claims. In addition, Hill hired family members without first seeking state approval, a program requirement. 

The DHHS also said that in 2023 and the first months of 2024, Balanced Nutrition obtained about $8,500 in reimbursements for Gingerbread Learning Center, a Durham daycare center, though “the facility reports not filing a claim with Balanced Nutrition.” 

“During the on-site compliance review, Ms. Hill confirmed with the compliance team that Gingerbread Learning Center had not filed a claim since November 2022,” the DHHS review said. Hill could not produce records showing that Balanced Nutrition sent the money it claimed on Gingerbread’s behalf to the daycare, the review said. 

The DHHS labeled Balanced Nutrition’s operations “seriously deficient,” and proposed barring Hill from participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program again. It also ordered Balanced Nutrition to return $132,118 to the state, mostly representing “disallowed” reimbursements from early 2024 related to the 15 daycares covered in the review. 

Balanced Nutrition, which sponsors about 90 daycares statewide, reported bringing in almost $1.8 million in revenue in 2022, according to tax records. 

In an August 7 letter, Hill’s attorneys assured the DHHS that “Balanced Nutrition takes these matters very seriously” and would “address the issues raised by the Agency.” Publicly, however, Robinson and Hill have repeatedly claimed that political opponents were attacking them.

Hill told WRAL in April that the DHHS supervising agent who worked with Balanced Nutrition circulated a photo of Robinson and Hill to colleagues in February 2023 and complained that Hill had misled her about her husband’s identity. 

In August, Robinson insinuated at an Asheville rally for former President Donald Trump that the wife of his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, was behind the attack on Balanced Nutrition. (Stein’s wife was a part-time attorney for the DHHS Division of Public Health.)

“My wife ran a successful business for almost 10 years, and it wasn’t until some folks inside of [the DHHS] who don’t like me found out who I was, and then the games began, the harassment began,” he told the crowd. “And now we find out that 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.”

In late July, Robinson told conservative talk radio host KC O’Dea that the DHHS was “being weaponized against somebody for political purposes,” and compared himself to former President Donald Trump, who faces dozens of federal and state felony charges.  

Robinson told O’Dea he had evidence that the allegations were “politically driven. We have the evidence to prove it, and we’re going to fight them up to the hilt.” 

In an August 30 letter to the DHHS, Balanced Nutrition’s attorneys did not address the substance of the allegations, focusing instead on their claims that DHHS employees targeted Hill.

They pointed out that the DHHS had informed the media about the allegations. They claimed that “one or more members of the Attorney General’s Office appear to have participated in the Agency’s audit of BN,” implying that Stein, as attorney general, was pulling the strings. They also alleged that the DHHS had scheduled multiple reviews of Balanced Nutrition in rapid succession. 

“Again, this deviation from the regulations occurred for the first time after the ‘discovery’ of Ms. Hill’s political identity,” they wrote. 

Balanced Nutrition is represented by Envisage Law, a Raleigh firm known for championing conservative legal causes. 

Some of Robinson and Hill’s claims don’t hold up to scrutiny and seem to be based on circumstantial evidence. 

For the last year, Anna Stein has worked part-time for the Division of Public Health, a part of the DHHS that has nothing to do with the Child and Adult Care Food Program. Her employment ended on September 6. Before that, she was a full-time state public health lawyer, working primarily on tobacco litigation. 

The Attorney General’s Office played no role in Balanced Nutrition’s compliance review, according to both that office and the DHHS. But the office does represent the DHHS in legal disputes over compliance and administrative actions—like this one. The difference with the Balanced Nutrition case is that it has produced “slightly more meetings than usual,” a source at the N.C. Department of Justice said.  

In a June 6 memo obtained by The Assembly, Stein recused himself “from any personal involvement in any matter related to Balanced Nutrition.” He assigned the case to a deputy. 

It’s true that a DHHS employee told colleagues about Robinson’s identity last year. (Robinson was on the Balanced Nutrition payroll as far back as 2016, and in 2018 was earning $3,500 a month as a full-time employee of his wife’s nonprofit, according to DHHS records. Hill never disclosed that he was her husband, as required.) The DHHS reassigned Balanced Nutrition to another specialist. 

But the agency scheduled compliance reviews in both 2023 and 2024, following an earlier review in 2021, which Balanced Nutrition’s lawyers argued indicated a vendetta. 

By law, the DHHS has to review participants in the Child and Adult Care Food Program at least every three years, and more often if there are problems. According to the DHHS, the 2023 review flagged several issues, including recordkeeping, fiscal discrepancies, and inadequate daycare monitoring. 

Balanced Nutrition corrected those problems, but the 2023 review prompted the agency to look at the organization again in 2024, a DHHS spokesperson told The Assembly. 

Balanced Nutrition had been on the DHHS’ radar for years. In 2021, it was placed on the state’s suspension-of-funding list, making it ineligible for state contracts. Balanced Nutrition had not turned over required audit reports, according to records obtained by The Assembly.

Balanced Nutrition remains on that list today, but because the Child and Adult Care Food Program is federally funded, it was still able to participate. 

More compelling evidence of bias might yet surface. Balanced Nutrition filed a massive public records request with the DHHS in April, seeking records as far back as 2014. The agency appears to have delivered some of those records on a thumb drive in June, but Balanced Nutrition’s lawyers said in August that the drive was corrupted. The agency then provided Balanced Nutrition with 628 pages of emails, which the lawyers called a “small subset” of the records request. 

“The production received by [Balanced Nutrition] to date has been spotty and extremely limited in scope,” the lawyers told the DHHS in a September 6 letter. “At a time when [Balanced Nutrition] is facing burdensome accusations of ‘serious deficiencies’ and ‘disallowances’ allegedly based on documents that the [DHHS] has purportedly reviewed, it is unreasonable and unconscionable that the agency withholds from [Balanced Nutrition] the very documents that may be critical to [Balanced Nutrition’s] defense against such accusations.”

The Assembly has filed a formal request for the records the DHHS turns over to Balanced Nutrition, but it has not been fulfilled. 

At Monday’s hearing with DHHS officials, Balanced Nutrition can attempt to explain or refute the allegations in the compliance review. If the DHHS rules against Balanced Nutrition, the nonprofit can appeal to the Office of Administrative Hearings.