The wife of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson owes the government thousands of dollars due to claims filed by her nonprofit organization that shouldn’t have been allowed, according to allegations outlined in documents released Thursday by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
Yolanda Hill, the second lady of North Carolina, has 15 days to either pay back the money or appeal the department’s decision. A DHHS spokeswoman said her nonprofit owes $24,400.
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It comes as her work managing the nonprofit has undergone increased scrutiny during Robinson's run for governor. Some of his Republican opponents in the GOP primary this spring questioned the work Balanced Nutrition had done, and Hill has previously criticized the state's investigation into her business as being politically motivated due to her husband's prominence.
Hill owned and managed Balanced Nutrition, which helped child care facilities obtain federal grant funding for food, until shutting it down this year. The group was also allowed to use some of the funds towards its operations. State officials now say some of the money it received should never have been handed over in the first place. They're charged with collecting the money on behalf of the federal government.
In some cases, according to the DHHS records, Balanced Nutrition filed claims for the same receipt multiple times, or it filed claims for more money than the receipts showed. In one case, records indicate, the group billed more than $10,000 on behalf of a child care center that hadn’t submitted any claims. DHHS says there's no record of that money ever being paid to the center.
Hill didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did her attorney or the lieutenant governor's office. A spokeswoman for Robinson's opponent in the governor's race, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, declined to comment.
The newest allegations from DHHS come a day after the agency published a report alleging numerous violations made by Balanced Nutrition. That report on Wednesday outlined possible erroneous billing issues and possible record-keeping, bookkeeping and monitoring violations. It also alleges that Hill improperly hired a family member.
Hill and her lawyer also didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday on that report. Robinson’s chief of staff in the lieutenant governor’s office Brian LiVecchi declined to comment on Wednesday, saying the DHHS report "is unrelated to any official business of the Lieutenant Governor’s office."
When the investigation was first announced several months ago, Hill accused DHHS of targeting her to hurt her husband's political career.
"We felt like we were being targeted from the beginning,” she told WRAL in an April interview.