Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams says he respects the conclusions that Paul Reynolds has drawn on the St. Barbe byelection. (CBC)

Premier Danny Williams says he is standing by Newfoundland and Labrador's chief electoral officer, amid calls for further investigation into a controversial byelection.

Paul Reynolds, the chief electoral officer, has refused to look further into the 2001 byelection in St. Barbe district that saw Progressive Conservative Wally Young narrowly win a traditionally Liberal seat.

The controversy was sparked by an agreed statement of facts released in the trial of disgraced former cabinet minister Ed Byrne, who was sent to jail last week over two fraud-related convictions.

Court was told that Byrne illegally used his constituency allowance to pay a campaign worker $3,000 to work on Young's byelection campaign. The money was never publicly disclosed. Such payments are supposed to be made by each political party. Court was also told that Byrne actually collected $5,000 from the house of assembly, and kept $2,000 for himself.

Both the Liberals and the NDP have called on Reynolds — a former PC party president himself — to resign if he continues to refuse to look further into the incident.

Reynolds said earlier this week that only Byrne is shown to have acted improperly in the process, and that the outcome would not have been different.

"The available evidence indicates no knowledge or involvement on the part of the candidate or party with respect to the actions of Ed Byrne. There is also no indication that the fraudulent actions on the part of Mr. Byrne affected the outcome of the 2001 byelection," Reynolds said in a statement earlier this week.

In a statement to CBC News, Williams said he has no intention of asking Reynolds to resign. The statement says government respects Reynolds's conclusion.