Statesmen and Scalawags

The printing industry has had more than its share of civic leaders, patriots and statesmen. Many of us in the industry like to feel that we are following in the footsteps of notable Americans like John Peter Zenger, William Bradford, Isaiah Thomas and, of course, Benjamin Franklin. We take pride in having chosen a profession with a rich history of community service and advocacy for justice and freedom.

Unfortunately, not everyone in our industry is a source of pride. Many of the nation's most notorious counterfeiters, Charles Ulrich for example, were printers. Recently another printer has managed to besmirch the profession with a seedy story of self-indulgence at the expense of the public. Mississippi State Representative Kevin McGee, from Brandon, has been fined $50,000 by the Mississippi Ethics Commission and ordered to repay $346,554.06 to the state for violations of state ethics laws.

The Commission found that since taking office in January 2008, Rep. McGee entered into 259 illegal service contracts with various agencies of the State of Mississippi. McGee is in the printing business and is an owner, along with other members of his family, of Service Printers of Flowood. To be fair here, McGee is appealing the ruling, and in a state as small as Mississippi, a printing company the size of Flowood is bound to secure some government printing orders with no knowledge or involvement on his part. Nevertheless, being in a position of public trust holds him to a higher standard. The Ethics Commission apparently felt that the evidence indicated clear violations of state rules. We hope there is a reasonable explanation, but it is difficult to imagine that a  potential, glaring conflict of interest was not clear to him from the beginning.