State audit finds financial oversight gaps in Zebulon

State Auditor Dave Boliek’s office released a rapid response special report on the Town of Zebulon on July 20 after an anonymous tip raised concerns about weak controls over town finances, excessive travel spending by commissioners and administrators, and unsupported consultant payments tied to the budget. The review found weaknesses in financial oversight, internal controls and contract administration that left too much room for errors to slip through.

The report pointed to missing contracts, undocumented consultant payments, duplicate payments, missing invoices and payment errors. It also found that a town finance staff member’s personal bank account was linked to the town’s credit card, a detail that raises immediate questions about separation of duties and whether anyone was checking transactions closely enough before public money moved out the door.

The risk for Zebulon taxpayers is not just whether one payment was wrong, but whether weak controls allowed several problems to stack up at once. The audit said the town accidentally drew more than $16,000 from a town employee’s bank account and that Zebulon overspent from its general fund. In a smaller Wake County town, those kinds of failures can mean ordinary spending decisions carry a bigger chance of draining resources that should have gone to roads, services or reserves.

The audit identified eight areas that needed improvement or had issues. Zebulon has since launched a new progress dashboard in response, giving residents a public way to track whether town leaders are fixing the gaps the audit exposed. The real test will be whether that public tracking is matched by tighter approvals, cleaner paperwork and stronger oversight of consultants, travel and card use.

Zebulon’s problems also land in a broader Wake County pattern of scrutiny. A separate state audit of Cary found questionable expenses and weaknesses in financial oversight, showing that the auditor has now flagged more than one local government in the county for spending controls that did not hold up under review. For Zebulon, the findings leave a straightforward accountability question for commissioners and staff: whether the town was dealing with isolated mistakes or a system that had gone too long without enough guardrails.