Former Blytheville Mayor Barrett Harrison answered several questions Friday afternoon about the city of Blytheville failing to pay more than $2 million to the IRS in payroll taxes.
Here are some of the questions from the 40-minute interview, followed by his answers.
"The first I knew about any delinquent payroll taxes was the IRS guy showed up right here in my office (at the Blytheville Gosnell Regional Airport Authority). That was the very first moment I knew anything whatsoever about it."
"No. Had I, I would have known and would have answered that other question earlier. And I've got to say I'm shocked. If we owed anybody that kind of money, why wouldn't we have been getting demand letters, one right after the other. Why did they wait so long to show up? And wouldn't those letters have required a signature with certified mail to be sure I was getting them? They're not going to produce anything showing I signed anything. If they do produce anything that has my name on it, then somebody is going to have to prove to me it's not the rubber stamp they have at city hall with my signature on it."
"I've asked that question to myself a million times. How could it possibly happen? How could it happen anywhere? It's interesting four or five of my friends in town, who all have businesses, some small and some large, have told me that this frightened them because they realized they didn't have any clue on whether or not their payroll taxes had been paid. Comments were made that if Joe didn't make our payroll taxes I wouldn't know it, unless he told me -- the person responsible -- or the IRS finally showed up and told me."
"How could something like this happen? Well, here's how it happened to me. The finance office didn't tell me they hadn't been paid. Period. Since it wasn't ever a function of the mayor's office, I simply wasn't smart enough to know to ask every two weeks if they had been paid. Secondly, we hadn't received anything from the IRS telling us they hadn't been paid and I'm going to stand by that until the bitter end. I've never signed for anything telling me those things had not been paid. You'd think, as bad a shape as our federal government is in, they would want their money as bad as anybody does and they ought to have a different system in place to let people know before now that they owed that much money. The financial statements that we were using to operate the city -- and I've got to give (finance director) Faye (Griggs) some credit here, she's been screaming for a better financial system software forever. She's always said the financial reports were frightening to her because she can't tell what's what about them. But they didn't indicate to me or the finance committee of the City Council or the entire City Council that they hadn't been paid."
He said state legislative auditors didn't catch the error either.
"In the bitter end, it's my responsibility. I was the mayor. I understand that and I'll take it. I'll say this: it's terribly embarrassing to me that it happened under my watch and thank God again the IRS showed up when they did so (Blytheville Mayor) James (Sanders) isn't having to deal with this. The part that didn't get paid under his watch, wasn't a number so big that he couldn't take care of it."
"If you ask any of our citizens they would tell you, just as you quoted in your piece yesterday, that at the end of the day, everything related to the operation of the city would be the responsibility of the mayor. That's what any citizen would say. Whose responsibility was it to pay it? It's the finance department's responsibility. They pay the payroll taxes."
"The mayor, the city clerk and the city treasurer don't have the first thing to do with causing the payroll taxes to be paid. We don't sign anything. We don't push any buttons. We don't go to the bank and make any type of payroll tax deposit or anything. That's the complete function of the finance department. I was there for 312 payrolls, if I've done my math right, and not one single time was I required or the city clerk or the city treasurer to do anything to cause them to be paid."
He said, 12 years ago, when he was elected to the first of three terms, the city physically deposited payroll at the bank.
"Then at some point it time, it was done electronically. Now, if I understand it right, they just pick up the telephone and call a certain number and push some buttons on a key pad."
"Nothing more than the brief conversation that we had in here that day -- that they were behind ... "Thank God that he showed up when he did. Because until he did, they hadn't been paid this year. It's because your new mayor, your new city clerk and your new city treasurer had nothing to do with causing those things to be paid. Had they not showed up until August or September or next January, in theory, they may not have been paid until then. Is that our mayor's fault? I've got to say no. He didn't have to do anything. He didn't know they weren't being paid. I will say this: James is working his rear end off to solve this problem, to be sure it can't EVER happen again. We've had a lot of good conversations about it and I admire the way he is handling this. I think he is doing a good thorough job."
"We had a brief conversation the day the IRS guy showed up. I asked him, had he talked to her yet or to (former treasurer) Doug Bush since he had mentioned their names? He said no, he was on his way to see Douglas. I said good, then I'm going to go see Faye because I was as curious as anybody what had happened, how it could have happened. He wasn't able to locate Doug that day so he showed up at city hall before she and I really got started on a conversation. So we've had a brief one about it. I'm sure she and Mayor Sanders have had several and they've gotten together and tried to figure out a way to solve the problem."
"Over those 312 payrolls, I don't remember hardly a month that there wasn't something we were in a bind on. But to understand how it works, every month they get turnback money from the state, they get their tax collections from the state, road money, general improvement money. Most of them come in at the same time every month so it wasn't unusual for a payroll to roll around -- and payroll also meant paying all the other bills too, basically at the same time -- where we were short here, short there, but we knew we were getting our turnback on Monday or we would call the state and they said it was going to be here on Friday. So there was always some understanding that in two days we were going to mail this stack of checks because we were getting our turnback. The last thing we were going to do was mail a bunch of hot checks. We never sent any hot checks out of there. That was the worst part about that job. When I got it, I didn't have any grey hair and I still had all of it. That was the worst part of that job and that was the part that I never could conquer -- trying to create enough revenue to do the things we wanted to do. Blytheville is obviously part of the Delta and there's not a community our size in the Delta -- and I'm talking about Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana -- there's not a town our size that is not suffering tremendously. Most are just like us in that they have a declining population every time they do a census. This won't matter to most of the people that read your article, but the people who keep up with this stuff say Blytheville has done so much better than everybody else that they would compare us to. We've managed to kinda stay a little more afloat than most places our size up and down the Mississippi River. We have nicer things such as the Sports Complex. If during my poor management of the city we managed to stay a little better than others, I'm happy about that."
"There are a lot of people who are terribly concerned about it -- and they should be -- they love Blytheville like I do. Could this have been prevented? Sure. There has to be some way it could have been prevented. But what I say to those folks who are so critical about the current administration, the past administration, the old city clerk and treasurer and Mrs. Griggs and everybody on her staff, I just say I appreciate how concerned they are and I bet they have some great ideas. I want to encourage each and every one of them to put their name on a ballot because we need good, smart, wonderful people to step up and get in the game."
mbrasfield@blythevillecourier.com