When Professional Restraint Becomes Silence: Reflections of a Public Administrator

I have had the benefit of the last several months to reflect on the resolution of litigation involving two North Carolina governmental entities, the public reporting surrounding those matters, and some of the commentary about my professional history. Time and distance have given me an opportunity to consider not only what happened, but what I might do differently today.

For much of my career, I believed strongly that public administrators have an obligation to protect the institutions they serve, even when doing so comes at a personal cost. Municipal executives routinely possess information they cannot or should not disclose publicly. We manage personnel matters, receive confidential legal advice, navigate relationships with governing bodies, and make decisions whose full context may never appropriately become public.

That responsibility requires restraint.

What I have learned is that restraint and silence are not always the same thing.

Why I Chose Silence

When serious allegations and public controversy surrounded my service in local government,

I made a deliberate decision not to respond publicly to much of what was being said about me.

That decision was not an admission that the allegations were true.

I believed that responding publicly could require discussing personnel matters, internal organizational dynamics, legal issues, and information I did not believe belonged in newspapers or on social media. I also believed that a professional administrator should resist the temptation to engage in a public back-and-forth simply because others were willing to do so.

In many respects, I still believe that was the correct instinct.

But with the benefit of hindsight, I recognize something I did not fully appreciate then: in protecting the institutions I served, I sometimes failed to adequately protect my own professional record.

When one side speaks repeatedly and the other remains silent, silence can eventually be interpreted as acquiescence. Allegations become assumptions. Assumptions become accepted narratives. And, years later, those narratives can remain accessible to anyone conducting an Internet search, often stripped of the context in which they originated.

That is a difficult lesson for any professional. It is an especially consequential one for public executives whose reputations are fundamental to their ability to lead.

The Person Behind the Headlines

I know that some people who encountered my name through news coverage formed an impression of me without ever meeting me. I have seen words such as “angry,” “toxic” and “litigious” used to describe me. I would be less than candid if I said those words did not hurt.

I also understand how public controversy works. People encounter fragments of complicated events, often at their most contentious moments, and form conclusions from what is available to them. I cannot control every conclusion someone reaches about me, nor do I expect everyone who has worked with me to view my leadership in the same way.

What I can say is that I recognize very little of myself in the person I have sometimes seen described publicly.

I have always cared deeply about the work I accepted and the communities I agreed to serve. Sometimes probably too deeply. I have strong convictions about fairness, accountability, stewardship, and the responsibility that comes with being entrusted with public resources and people's livelihoods. I have made difficult decisions. I have challenged practices I believed needed to change. I have expected accountability from others, and I have had to learn to expect it just as readily from myself.

I have also made mistakes. Every meaningful leadership career includes decisions that, with the benefit of hindsight and additional experience, might be approached differently. I can acknowledge that without accepting the conclusion that difficult outcomes necessarily mean the underlying leadership was improper or that the characterizations attached to me were fair.

What I know about myself is that I tried very hard to do right by the organizations and people entrusted to me, even when the choices were difficult and even when I did not always get everything right. I cared about employees. I cared about communities. I cared about whether public institutions worked the way the people depending upon them deserved — and I still do.

That does not make me flawless. It makes me human.

And perhaps that is what gets lost most easily when someone's professional life becomes a headline.

What the Record Now Says

In May 2024, after examining the evidence, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined that the evidence supported the conclusion that the Town of Kenly discharged me because of my race and in retaliation for my prior protected activity. The Commission found reasonable cause to believe that the Town had violated Title VII. The related litigation was resolved in 2025.

In 2026, my litigation with the North Carolina Department of State Treasurer, arising from actions of the Local Government Commission, was also resolved. As part of the publicly reported resolution, the Department stated that the Local Government Commission's earlier decision concerning my employment in Spring Lake “was not intended to suggest that Ms. Jones had acted improperly or to opine on her qualifications for employment in other public administration roles.”

That record matters to me.

Not because it erases controversy. It does not.

Not because it means every decision I have made throughout a lengthy public-service career was beyond criticism. No executive should make such a claim.

It matters because there is an important distinction between legitimate disagreement with a public administrator's decisions and unsupported assertions concerning that administrator's professional conduct or integrity.

Public executives should expect scrutiny. We should expect disagreement. We should be prepared to defend our recommendations, explain our decisions when appropriate, accept accountability when warranted, and learn from mistakes.

But accountability must also leave room for accuracy.

Litigation Is Not a Professional Strategy

Some public commentary about my career has focused on the fact that disputes involving governmental entities have resulted in litigation and financial settlements.

The implication sometimes attached to those settlements, that they reflect a propensity to sue public institutions for financial gain, is inaccurate.

I have never considered litigation an ordinary or desirable way to resolve workplace disputes.

Litigation consumes time, resources, and energy. It places professional relationships and reputations under a microscope. It extends disputes that most people would much rather put behind them. A settlement does not transform that experience into a windfall, nor does it tell the reader everything necessary to understand why litigation occurred.

In each instance, I pursued legal action only after reaching the conclusion that formal remedies were necessary to protect my rights and professional interests.

I would have much preferred that the underlying circumstances had been resolved without litigation.

That is not an indictment of public institutions. I have devoted most of my professional life to them precisely because I believe in their importance.

It is simply an acknowledgment that institutions are made up of people, disagreements sometimes become serious, systems do not always work as intended, and there are circumstances in which legal remedies become necessary.

The Leadership Lesson I Carry Forward

The most important lesson I have taken from these experiences is not that public administrators should become more combative.

Quite the opposite.

I continue to believe that municipal executives should exercise extraordinary discipline when speaking about their organizations, governing bodies, employees, and former colleagues. Confidential information should remain confidential. Personnel matters should not become social-media content. Professional disagreements should not become personal attacks.

But I no longer believe those obligations require indefinite silence about one's own professional record.

There is a middle ground between saying nothing and saying everything.

A public executive can protect confidential information while correcting demonstrably false statements. A manager can respect an institution while also protecting her own professional integrity. A leader can acknowledge legitimate criticism without accepting factual misrepresentation.

And perhaps, most importantly, one can respond without retaliating.

That is the balance I would strike differently today.

Looking Forward

I have spent considerable time thinking about what I want the next chapter of my professional life to look like. I don't want it defined by litigation, controversy, or by proving people wrong. I want it defined by what I have learned, what I can still contribute, and the work that remains meaningful to me.

Experience has deepened my understanding of leadership, as I believe it should. I remain grounded in many of the same principles that guided me then: fairness, accountability, stewardship, and a genuine commitment to the people and communities I serve. What has changed is my understanding of how important it is to extend some of that same stewardship to my own professional voice and reputation.

I cannot change what was said years ago, nor am I interested in spending the next several years responding to everyone who has expressed an opinion about me.

People are entitled to those opinions. They are entitled to disagree with decisions I have made, question my management approach, believe another course of action would have been preferable, or conclude that I would not be the right administrator for a particular organization. That comes with leadership.

What I have reconsidered is whether professional restraint requires me to leave factual inaccuracies concerning my record unanswered simply because silence may appear more dignified.

I no longer believe that it does.

Where material inaccuracies concerning my professional record arise, I believe it is appropriate to correct the record factually, proportionately, and respectfully, without compromising confidentiality, attacking others, or attempting to rewrite history.

There is a lesson in that distinction that I wish I had understood earlier.

I understand it now.

And I carry it with me into whatever comes next.