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Several residents told Cary Town Council members Thursday night they should resign over a critical state audit of the town’s spending.
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The council placed its former town manager, Sean Stegall, on administrative leave on Nov. 20 before Stegall resigned Dec. 13. Several media outlets, including The News & Observer, reported on instances of questionable town spending under Stegall.
Thursday’s meeting — where several residents had to stand as seats were close to full — was the council’s first regular meeting since July 16 when the State Auditor’s Office released its investigation into Cary’s “excessive” spending under Stegall. State Auditor Dave Boliek said the town had a “culture of extravagant spending.”
Cary commissioned its own investigation from the law firm Womble Bond Dickinson, whose partner, John Cooke, presented the firm’s findings Thursday night.
Cooke identified several “operational failures” — meaning a policy was in place to prevent misconduct but not applied as intended — that Stegall was responsible for, including:
Womble Bond Dickinson concluded there was a structural vulnerability in the council-manager model that let Stegall gain too much control over town operations. The firm made 21 recommendations for the town to improve transparency, financial accountability and workplace culture.
“These findings do not define you, but they are an opportunity to make the town better,” Cooke said.
Tensions began to bubble when council member Carissa Kohn-Johnson asked Cooke what percentage of the $24 million of p-card transactions between Jan. 1, 2024, and Dec. 31, 2025, as the state auditor’s report reviewed, was considered questionable spending.
Cooke said it was “not worth one’s effort to look through all those transactions” which prompted loud murmurs of disapproval from the crowd.
“Really?” Cary resident and physician Elena Morgan shouted from the crowd. “Really? I’d like to know how that money was wasted.”
“Please, please,” Mayor Harold Weinbrecht said to quiet the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, please.”
Weinbrecht settled the crowd again as Cooke finished answering Kohn-Johnson’s question.
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Some residents — in heckling from the crowd and in public comments on the podium — targeted Mayor Pro Tempore Lori Bush, who accepted $37,397 from the town to pay her master’s degree tuition at Northwestern University’s public policy program, The N&O reported. Bush has said she later paid the money back.
Kohn-Johnson followed up and said she was “part of a machine of failure,” and it would be inappropriate to say she did not share culpability. But moving forward, she said, residents should know they have a council “willing to stomp their feet.” That drew jeers and sarcastic laughs from the crowd. Kohn-Johnson shrugged it off.
“It’s also my job to sit here and and take the heat,” she said. “So that’s what I’ll continue to do.”
But during the “Public Speaks Out” period of the meeting, over a dozen residents said they didn’t believe Womble Bond Dickinson’s focus on Stegall was enough. One resident, Todd McGee, pointed to the state auditor’s findings of excessive p-card spending on cards that did not belong to Stegall but other employees.
Enrolled agent Michael Anderson started his comments by addressing the mayor, council and “dancing queens” — the latter a reference to the mockumentary town employees made about a Wilmington retreat, INDY Week reported — drawing guffaws and applause from the crowd.
Anderson criticized the town’s excessive spending in the context of its recent property tax increase, saying taxpayers were “essentially paying for your car to drive around town,” a reference to the state auditor’s finding that the mayor and council members receive an $802 monthly car allowance. Any council members in the documentary or who “lack the spine to read a budget” should resign, Anderson said.
“You are too busy cashing your own checks to look at the balance sheet,” Anderson said. “You expect us to believe you are just helpless victims misled by a mastermind town manager? It’s pathetic.”
Resident and attorney Marie Inserra thanked Cary’s frontline workers — “not the ones who went to the $4,164 dinner” — and urged the council to accept Womble Bond Dickinson’s recommendations.
Inserra said the ordeal has brought a “widespread public disgrace to this town and to the Democratic Party.” She called upon the N.C. General Assembly to pass a law allowing a town recall election, drawing a resounding round of applause and cheers from the crowd.
Inserra continued, saying council members were complicit in accepting expensive dinners, Ray-Ban sunglasses and car allowances.
“I do not agree with Republicans very often,” Inserra said. “But the State Auditor nailed it.”
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This story was originally published July 24, 2026 at 8:06 AM.