.htaccess permissions

On a Centos 7 Google Cloud server my .htaccess file is owned by Apache, and has read/write premissions for everyone rw-rw-rw. I can write to locally using nano (not as sudo) and ftp a new file using Filezilla. I see do not see any all in one settings in the .htaccess file.

However Using the plugin and trying to save the spam settings I get a permissions error. Not sure what setting(s) I need to change.