The joint investigation into the circumstances surrounding the city of Blytheville's multimillion payroll withholding tax debacle is still ongoing, said Lt. Brant Tosh, who is heading up the investigation for the Arkansas State Police.
Tosh added Thursday afternoon that there is no timetable for its conclusion.
He noted the State Police is working at the FBI's pace.
The investigation has been ongoing since at least April.
In February, Second Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington sent a letter to Arkansas State Police Criminal Investigation Division Commander Cleve Barfield requesting a state police investigation of the city of Blytheville audit reports.
In the letter, Ellington cited "the outrageous amount of unpaid taxes and penalties" as the reason to investigate "whether the failure to pay proper withholding taxes is the result of criminal wrongdoing."
He wrote that he reviewed the Division of Legislative Audit Report for Dec. 31, 2009 and 2008 as well as the city of Blytheville's 2010 audit.
"Both Audit Reports reflect amounts in excess of $2 million in unpaid withholding taxes owed the Internal Revenue Service," Ellington wrote. "The city's failure to pay its employee withholding taxes has resulted in more than $1 million in penalties and interest owed the IRS, plus the unpaid withholding taxes."
In the letter, he said he has met with employees of Legislative Audit on several occasions and "been advised they found no obvious criminal wrongdoing."
"However, with the size of this deficit and the failure to pay more than $2 million, which was in part withheld from city employees' paychecks, there are concerns this deficit is more than just poor management on the city government's part," Ellington continued.
"Our office has received a stream of requests from citizens of Blytheville over the past six months for an investigation of this matter. However, I determined it necessary to wait until I received the 2010 report before proceeding," Ellington wrote. "Because of the outrageous amount of unpaid taxes and penalties, I am asking the Arkansas State Police to open an investigation into this matter to determine whether the failure to pay proper withholding taxes is the result of criminal wrongdoing."
Blytheville-Gosnell Regional Airport Authority president Barrett Harrison was mayor, and former city employee Faye Griggs was the finance director during the time that the payroll taxes weren't paid.
Harrison has maintained he didn't know the taxes weren't paid. Griggs has not spoken publicly on the matter.
In February deputy legislative auditor June Barron said she doesn't believe the city of Blytheville's $2,344,004 unremitted payroll taxes were stolen, but instead supplemented various city services.
Barron said there was "no indication that any of this money was stolen, misappropriated, misused in any way."
She said the city basically used the tax money to pay other bills.
"There was no indication in any of our audit procedures that any of the tax money was stolen or used for someone else's personal gain," Barron said. "It was simply used to provide other city services."
mbrasfield@blythevillecourier.com