The Cary Town Council will discuss a proposal to spend $150,000 on an internal investigation into the former town manager, Sean Stegall, and another $100,000 on an “employee engagement initiative” at its regular meeting this evening. Both items are part of a bigger effort to repair community trust following Stegall’s December resignation over alleged misuse of town funds and abuses of power.
Since Cary announced Stegall’s departure in mid-December, residents have been clamoring for more transparency from town leaders about his spending, his workplace conduct, and the town council’s oversight of him. The council, for its part, has been discussing potential reforms and how to check the town manager’s authority going forward.
Cary Mayor Harold Weinbrecht announced plans for the internal investigation last month. Immediately following Stegall’s resignation, Weinbrecht said the town had hired Womble Bond Dickinson, a law firm that specializes in employment investigations, to “join us in looking deeply into [Stegall’s] activities … to ensure that we are fully aware of any problems, and that we put process changes in place so that something like this will never happen again in Cary.” It’s not clear if the law firm has commenced its review.
In addition to the internal investigation commissioned by the Town of Cary, the State Auditor’s Office and the State Bureau of Investigation are each investigating Stegall’s spending. In public statements, Weinbrecht has welcomed the dual investigations and promised the town will cooperate fully.
According to the agenda for Thursday’s council meeting, the employee engagement initiative would include a survey of Town of Cary staff (approximately 1,300 people). Earlier this month, Weinbrecht told the INDY he had asked Stegall to commission a staff satisfaction survey multiple times prior to his resignation, but it never happened. Weinbrecht said he wished he had pushed harder for the survey, since he later learned that Stegall “was unpredictable” in the workplace, “doing things, saying things to certain staff members that were inappropriate, and they felt like he was not being the leader he once was.”
The meeting agenda notes that the $250,000 total in proposed spending on these initiatives would come from Cary’s General Fund as a mid-year appropriation. (Cary’s total budget for fiscal year 2026 is about $511 million, with about $7 million set aside for mid-year appropriations “to nimbly and adaptively respond to economic and other changing factors during the fiscal year.”)
The internal investigation and employee engagement initiative aren’t the first changes prompted by Stegall’s departure, and they’re unlikely to be the last.
Weinbrecht previously told INDY that interim town manager Russ Overton will not hold one-on-one meetings with council members as Stegall did but will include more people and better documentation. Weinbrecht also said he wants to make the annual budget process more transparent to the public.
At a January 8 town council work session, council members Sarika Bansal and Lori Bush asked staff for more information and updated recommendations related to the town manager’s spending authority, the town’s fund balance, the external audit process, senior staff travel expenditures, and the land acquisition process—noting they knew staff were already looking into some of those topics.
“These discussions will help strengthen trust and ensure we are fulfilling our responsibilities to the residents we serve,” Bansal said during the work session.
Town staff are preparing a report based on Bansal and Bush’s requests, which they will present at a future council meeting.
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