In an otherwise routine Charlotte City Council meeting, it was a bombshell that would explode in the morning headlines.
“A Blue Line train derailed in Charlotte. Why did CATS keep it a secret?” read one.
“CATS staff kept new CEO in the dark about light rail derailment risk” read another.
The March headlines followed the disclosure by Charlotte Area Transit System’s interim CEO that a light rail car had derailed the previous May, revealing the need for costly repairs to the entire fleet and raising questions about why the public was just finding out.
After the meeting, council member Tariq Bokhari called City Manager Marcus Jones.
“You have to go out there and speak on your behalf,” Bokhari told him. “Even though I feel like the ultimate failure was due to (previous CATS leadership), the buck stops with you.”
Since becoming city manager in 2016, Jones, 55, has been reluctant to put himself forward as a public face for the city, deferring instead to elected leaders or top officials like Brent Cagle, CATS’ interim head. Jones rarely talks to reporters.
Bokhari wasn’t the only elected official urging Jones to take a higher profile after the rail disclosures. Jones himself was coming to the same conclusion. In a rare interview, he told The Ledger that he didn’t want his lack of availability seen as a lack of accountability.
“Over the course of the last year, it’s become evident that my availability, let’s say to the media, may be problematic to my entire team,” he said. “And while it’s not my strong suit … if it’s something that’s damaging the team or damaging what we’re trying to do, I need to make myself more available. Starting with you.”
Jones oversees a workforce of more than 8,000 and a budget of over $3 billion. In Charlotte’s system, the council sets policy and the manager carries it out and has oversight of day-to-day decisions. Last fall, the council gave him a 14% raise, to $434,551. He’s North Carolina’s highest-paid manager.
Jones came to Charlotte amid the nationally televised protests over the 2016 Keith Lamont Scott shooting and dealt with the protests that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd. But the CATS controversy could arguably be his biggest, raising questions of management and costing the city as much as $30 million in repairs.
Previous city managers were comfortable in front of cameras; some were outspoken. Former City Manager Ron Carlee, for instance, often made his opinions known. In a 2016 text to then-Mayor Jennifer Roberts, for example, he called HB2 — the so-called “bathroom bill” — “stunning,” “very sad” and a “new low for N.C.”
For Jones, who’s spent decades in state and local governments, being out front doesn’t come naturally.
“He felt it was the job of elected officials,” said council member Ed Driggs. “It was just a perception that he had of his role, of his place.”
Charlotte is Jones’ first job outside his native Virginia. He had a bumpy start. Anonymous letter-writers suggested he go home. For a while, he questioned whether he’d made the right choice.
“I was cautious with how I approached this job,” he said. “Being the new guy — remember with the anonymous letters saying, ‘Send him back to Virginia’ — maybe I was too cautious too long.”
A pastor’s son with an analytical mind
Jones grew up the youngest of seven in Caroline County, Virginia, just north of Richmond. His father, Elmore, pastored a Baptist country church built shortly after the Civil War. His mother, Ruth, worked as a maid. Marcus Jones grew up in a three-bedroom house, even sharing a bed with two siblings. He said the family remains “super, super, super close.”
Stanley Jones, 78, said his younger brother was always analytical.
“He always looked at what the outcome would be before he jumped into a situation, even as a young man,” said Stanley, a former superintendent of county schools. “And that became a part of him.”
While several siblings went into education, Jones studied political science and public administration, first at the University of Virginia and then at James Madison University. After starting grad school at Richmond’s Virginia Commonwealth, he took an unpaid internship in the state budget office.
Finishing at VCU, he took a paying job in the budget office before going on to work as an analyst for the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission. He returned to the administration, where he rose to deputy secretary of finance under two governors.
Jones left state government in 2004 to become assistant city manager and budget director in Norfolk. In 2009, he returned to Richmond for a top job in city government. Two years later, it was back to Norfolk as city manager.
When Jones got the call from Charlotte in 2016, he asked his oldest brother for advice.
“I said … evidently they see something in you, and this might be a move you need to take,” Stanley told him.
So Jones moved to Charlotte with his wife, Jillian, and their three children. (Their daughter is now 24, their sons, 21 and 16.) He credits his faith as well as support from back home with helping him get through those first months.
“With some of those headwinds, it was just good to be rooted in faith, and some of those folks I was associated with in Virginia (were) a strong support network,” he said.
‘He’s just very private’
With a shaved head and a mustache over his trim, 5-foot-6 frame, Jones dodges the afternoon sun outside a coffee shop at the Metropolitan in midtown. Talking to a reporter, he’s personable, at times even ebullient. It’s a side that he doesn’t always show the public.
“He’s a fun guy, he’s just very private,” said former council member Julie Eiselt. “He makes everybody feel like he’s their closest friend. He’s really good at it.”
A few months ago, community organizer Robert Dawkins was talking to Jones about strategies to reduce violence in Charlotte. Sitting in his office atop the Government Center, the manager impressed Dawkins not only with his advice on how to create an effective program but with his candor and approachability.
So Dawkins offered some advice of his own.
“I said, ‘Marcus, if you could go spend time in the community, people would think you’re super effective,’” Dawkins recalls. “‘You can’t do everything on the 15th floor.’”
“Of all the bureaucrats I’ve dealt with,” Dawkins said, “he’s probably the quickest thinking on his feet.”
Jones’ low profile contrasts to those of some predecessors. Elected officials sometimes bristled at managers they saw as too ready to grab the spotlight. A former council member, who asked not to be named, said some people appreciate that Jones is different.
“But I do think there’s been frustration about his unwillingness to engage with the media,” the former member said. “There’s a happy middle ground. … I think the majority of council would prefer that he find that middle.”
Jones’ style has been to let elected officials take the lead. Some say to a fault.
“His model is not to get in a confrontational relationship with his bosses even if someone is saying something out of line or ridiculous,” Bokhari said. “People don’t realize (what) a dysfunctional council we have right now.”
Critics have questioned the openness of city government under Jones, particularly the difficulty in getting public records.
“By every measure, the city of Charlotte has gotten less transparent during Marcus Jones’ time as city manager,” Nick Ochsner, WBTV’s chief investigative reporter, told Charlotte magazine earlier this year. “(The) city routinely takes years to fulfill records requests.”
A city spokesman said one reason is that the number of records requests has multiplied every year, from 561 in 2018 to 1,736 last year. Jones said, “We’ve gotten better at it.”
But, he adds, “We need to get better.”
Mayor Vi Lyles, who praises Jones’ work ethic, said he’s adapting to the need for more openness. “He is just adjusting like all of us,” she said, “that if you have a strong and competitive media in the community, you’ve got to adjust to what they’re asking us to do. ...
“Everybody recognizes that there are challenges. … The measure of a person is how you rebound from them.”
Who is responsible for CATS’ troubles?
For Charlotte, the CATS revelations came at a bad time.
The city wants authority to levy a penny sales tax that would raise $13.5 billion for transportation, most targeted to expand rail and bus service. Legislative leaders already have poured cold water on the plan, saying it devotes too little to roads. The CATS controversy, by raising questions about the city’s management of its existing transit system, doesn’t help. It casts a rare spotlight on Jones.
Former CATS CEO John Lewis, who left last fall, has pushed back against critics who blame him for the system’s troubles. He told the Charlotte Observer that ultimately it was Jones’ responsibility. “I think when the problems get brought to you, you have a responsibility to address it,” he told the paper.
The city issued a lengthy rebuttal to Lewis’ charges that it ignored warning signs. Asked about the charges, Jones told The Ledger that “John’s not any different than any other department head I work with. When issues come up, we try to find ways to solve (them). There’s different leadership at CATS right now, and the results are amazing over the course of 3 to 4 months.”
County commissioner Leigh Altman, who has unsuccessfully pushed for an outside investigation of CATS, said Wednesday that she believes the transit agency’s problems extended to the supervision of its former CEO. Although she didn’t name names, she seemed to be talking about Jones and the City Council: “It wasn’t just Mr. Lewis,” Altman said at a sometimes-testy Metropolitan Transit Commission meeting. “There was … millions of dollars that weren’t spent on maintenance that wasn’t done. Many people above Mr. Lewis should have seen that and had a red flag, and that never happened.”
Driggs, who chairs the council’s transportation committee, told The Ledger that Jones “placed his trust in some people that he shouldn’t have trusted.” So far, there’s no indication that the council is souring on the manager.
“This is a dark spot for him, and I think it will be a topic in his review,” Driggs said. “But there are many bright spots as well. And I hope we all maintain some perspective in assessing the consequences of the CATS situation. … All of us on council should feel some accountability because we have somehow (lost) the trust of the public. And we have to build it back.”
Meanwhile, Driggs is trying to teach Jones how to play the guitar. (“I am the worst student ever,” Jones said.) He’s also learned what his friend, businessman Malcomb Coley, has since arriving in Charlotte a decade ago. “We got to know (the) city together,” Coley said of Jones. “It’s a relationship city and requires you to get out and build those.”
Jones said he’s committed to being more open. He acknowledges that he and other officials “have to win back the public’s trust.”
“I love Charlotte,” he said. “I love being here. I’d love to be here as long as Charlotte would have me.”
Jim Morrill covered politics for the Charlotte Observer for more than 30 years before retiring in 2021. Follow him on Twitter at @jimmorrill.