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Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski's newly unveiled pick for chief operating officer of the city's urban renewal agency has a resume that impressed key City Council members but a past that one said raises questions that need to be answered.
The city quietly announced Friday that Marc Woolley is Biskupski's choice to fill the post managing day-to-day operations at the agency that's central to efforts to generate affordable housing and revitalize neighborhoods.
Woolley, an East Coast attorney by profession, has a background working at large public and private entities, including the Philadelphia Housing Authority, Delaware River Port Authority and the Hershey Trust Co.
That history, which also included a stint at Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll, one of Philadelphia's most prominent private law firms, impressed the chairwoman and vice chairman of the Redevelopment Agency (RDA), who met with Woolley this week.
"One thing that I liked about Marc Woolley is he has experience dealing with complex financial structures for big deals," said City Councilman Derek Kitchen, who is also vice chairman of the RDA board.
Biskupski heralded Woolley as a top choice after a nationwide search because of background in affordable housing. He worked in various roles from June 1999 to December 2003 at the Philadelphia Housing Authority.
He resigned from that agency amid accusations lobbed by former employees, one of whom said Woolley ordered staff to skirt federal regulations by amending contracts in ways that benefited private law firms, including one that Woolley would later work for.
Woolley on Friday said the allegations were unfounded and he was cleared of wrongdoing. He pointed to the vetting required for his position at the Delaware River Port Authority as evidence that he has worked in high-profile positions after being named in several lawsuits related to his work at the Philadelphia Housing Authority.
"What happens a lot of times in Philadelphia [is] because of your position, you get named in lawsuits," Woolley said. "These have been disposed of."
George V. Troilo, then an attorney at the agency responsible for developing and maintaining affordable housing in Philadelphia, alleged in 2003 that Woolley ordered that contracts be amended to avoid oversight by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), according to Michael Pileggi, who represented Troilo in the lawsuit.
"[Woolley] comes with some baggage," said Pileggi, also a former top attorney at the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) who was fired and filed his own lawsuit.
Pileggi said the agency under Woolley's tenure was undergoing a "pay-to-play" scheme by sending contracts for legal work to private firms that were donating heavily to then-Philadelphia Mayor John Street.
Just over a year after joining the housing agency, Woolley was promoted from assistant legal counsel, responsible for drafting tenant leases and development agreements, to general manager of human resources.
"They took all our employment files from the litigation department and transferred them over to his supervision in human resources," Pileggi said. "That was part of the pay-to-play."
Pileggi said while Woolley oversaw litigation for the agency, and before being named general manager for asset management, he failed to inform the agency's insurance carrier about 20-25 employment lawsuits that were handled by Ballard Spahr, which he said received hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"Because the cases were never tendered, [the insurance carrier] was not obligated to pay," Pileggi alleged. "Thus, PHA was required to pay substantially higher legal fees for the Woolley cases."
HUD sent a letter asking about the "escalating costs of defending employment cases," Pileggi said, and the use of an outside firm to represent the agency in all these cases.
Pileggi said that before a meeting scheduled with HUD about the issue, in April 2002, he told the agency's executive director he planned to tell the federal employees about what he called the "misuse of funds."
He said he was fired the next day. He filed suit that September, saying his civil and constitutional rights were violated and asking for monetary and punitive damages.
After initially suing Woolley and other executives, Pileggi later amended his case and dropped Woolley as a named defendant, although he still appeared throughout the complaint. The case was settled in 2005.
Woolley said it was actually Pileggi who failed to report the cases.
"He should have reported them to the insurance carrier," Woolley said, adding that he reported the issue after his promotion. "Because this is what I do, I come in and fix things."
In total, Woolley was named in four lawsuits stemming from his time at the housing authority. In two, the court ruled in favor of the agency and its executives. The suits filed by Troilo and Pileggi were settled.
"[Troilo] did very well," Pileggi said. "I didn't do bad either." He declined to provide details.
At his most recent job, Woolley was chief compliance officer of the Hershey Trust Co., the largest shareholder of one of the world's premiere chocolate manufacturing companies.
He was chief compliance officer of the trust at a tumultuous time before he was fired last year amid infighting by board members and an intervention by the Pennsylvania attorney general. There was no indication of wrongdoing by Woolley.
Matthew Rojas, Biskupski's spokesman, said Woolley had been vetted for past work and was a good choice for the position.
"We stand by all the good things that he's done," Rojas said, "his strong resume [and] his strong experience in development of affordable housing."
Kitchen said he was aware of some of the accusations in Woolley's past work history, "but I didn't get all the details."
"There are some unanswered that are concerns for me," Kitchen said.
Woolley will appear before the city council at Tuesday night's meeting.
Twitter: @TaylorWAnderson