Payments manual not remembering roles assigned

I use the payments manual credit card processor for testing. I go to config/local plugins and then edit and set it to only show for administrators. I later published a site update from Visual Studio and noticed in some order checks that people were using it to make purchases. How??? I go back and see the role assignment is not set. I don't know where it's persisted but this was a close call, fortunately only about a dozen orders as a feature I added wasn't working, thankfully in another area.

So where are the roles persisted for a plugin such as the Payments.Manual plugin? and why isn't it persisted between Visual Studio publishing?

That configuration is stored in the Plugin.Json file
If the Plugin was installed from the Zip then it would have the default config
If as you say the config is not there then then publishing may not transfer this file

That's what I figured but I didn't see a location for roles so I guess it's added if it doesn't exist.