More charges arise vs. youth organizer

About 60 Philadelphia teens and young adults worked in a summer jobs program with longtime community organizer William Mackey last year, but most never got paid.

After the Daily News reported Tuesday that a federal grand jury may be investigating Mackey, word of the payless summer jobs came to light yesterday.

For years Mackey headed the City Wide Youth Leadership Agency, but now faces criminal charges.

In addition, a woman who said that Mackey caused a December 2006 car accident claimed that he failed to pay the "less than $1,000" in damages she was awarded in Small Claims Court.

But, Mackey still had "a swimming pool installed" at the house in which he now lives on Fairdale Road near Academy, in the Northeast, alleged Gwenda D. Perry, 56.

Mackey, 48, complained to the Daily News last night: "Now you dogging me about my swimming pool and my house."

Mackey wouldn't discuss Perry's accident claim. "That is a private civil matter," he said.

As for the summer jobs program, Mackey said that he filed a complaint with the federal Department of Labor to try to get money to pay the students.

"I'm still fighting for young people," Mackey said yesterday.

Angela Tucker, of Olney, said that her college-aged daughter was supervising younger students, ages 14 to 17, who worked at a number of sites around the city such as day-care centers and stores.

Tucker said that her daughter, then 20, was counting on the job to help pay living expenses at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she is a junior.

She had worked for Mackey when she was in high school and did get paid before, Tucker said yesterday.

But while her daughter worked from June to September last year, she got only one paycheck.

"I do have one pay stub for $500 for a two-week period," Tucker said.

When it was time for her daughter to return to school last September, she said: "I had to beg, borrow and steal to get this money together for her that I wasn't ready to pay because she was going to have her own money."

Mackey said yesterday that state Rep. W. Curtis Thomas had promised to help him get funding for the jobs program.

"But when the state budget was delayed, the money never materialized," Mackey said.

Thomas, however, said that Mackey asked him only to support a grant request for the jobs program.

"When I talked to the state Department of Labor, they said it looked like Mackey started the summer program without having the funding in hand," Thomas said yesterday. He said that the state couldn't fund a program "after the fact," since it had not been previously approved.

Mackey was charged last fall with theft, writing bad checks and related offenses for allegedly cashing a $24,000 check that was made out to another organization, leasing copiers billed to the school district for $105,000 and writing $51,000 in bad checks.