D’Angelo given CAO interview questions, answers

Documents written by regional chair’s staff downloaded before final interview

The Standard has discovered more evidence of documents that appear to have compromised the 2016 Niagara Region chief administrative officer hiring process.

Further investigation by The Standard has found Carmen D’Angelo downloaded documents written by the staff of Regional Chair Alan Caslin that contained interview questions and answers and confidential information about other candidates.

One document, written by Caslin’s then-director of communications, Jason Tamming — now director of strategic communications for the Region — provides suggested answers to questions D’Angelo had to address in a written presentation to the CAO hiring committee. Many of those suggestions were used, sometimes verbatim, in D’Angelo’s presentation which also has been obtained by The Standard.

A local expert on recruiting for government agencies said information about candidates and interview questions are kept strictly confidential to protect the legitimacy of a hiring process.

Anne Charette of the Burke Group, a Niagara-based recruiting firm that was not involved in the CAO hiring, said violating confidentiality and fairness rules opens an agency up to legal action by failed candidates.

“When you are doing the hiring for any agency, you cannot give an advantage to any candidate,” she said. “You do that to protect the candidates, the agency and, frankly, your own company. When I do hirings, it’s my firm’s reputation that is on the line.”

More memos

A previous Standard expose, published in April, revealed that a memo containing confidential information about five candidates written by

Caslin’s policy director Robert D’Amboise was downloaded by D’Angelo weeks before his interview for the position.

During September and October 2016, as the committee of regional councillors charged with hiring a CAO did its work, D’Angelo downloaded two other documents written by D’Amboise and one written by Tamming.

The Standard verified who wrote the documents, when they were written and when D’Angelo downloaded them, using authoring information embedded in the documents and other digital data obtained by The Standard. Memos containing the names of other CAO candidates were further verified by contacting them to confirm they had been part of the process.

As with the document the newspaper first reported on in April, these memos were written in Microsoft Word and do not contain the letterhead of the Region or the Phelps Group, the firm hired to run the hiring process.

The documents were written between Sept. 20 and Oct. 10, 2016, and were all downloaded by D’Angelo before his Oct. 12 interview with the selection committee.

One memo, titled “Messaging” was written by D’Amboise and contains confidential information about a further three CAO candidates. As a result, D’Angelo had information on seven other people applying for the position.

The second document titled “Questions (Revised)” containing interview questions for the CAO job was also written by D’Amboise.

The third memo, written by Tamming was downloaded twice by D’Angelo on Oct. 8, 2016, with the titles “Q&A” and “JT Q&A Suggestions” and provides suggested answers for D’Angelo’s written presentation.

Questions and answers

On Oct. 6, 2016, The Phelps Group sent D’Angelo five questions he had to answer for a written presentation to be submitted to the hiring committee during his interview on Oct. 12.

The Phelps Group provided The Standard with a copy of those questions, which were sent to D’Angelo using the firm’s letterhead, and they match the questions in the Tamming memo.

The answers in the memo were incorporated into D’Angelo’s written submission, sometimes verbatim.

For example, in the Tamming memo, under the heading “Encourage economic development,” the answer reads “Build on council’s low tax increase and incentive programs (Economic Gateway Incentives)” and “Eliminate barriers and red tape for local businesses so that they are able to expand and be Niagara’s ambassadors to the corporate world. If businesses aren’t happy with their ability to do business with the Region (procurement, bridge etc.) or there is red tape (public works/planning) that message will spread.”

D’Angelo’s written presentation to the CAO hiring committee under the same heading reads: “Identify all opportunities to raise awareness of Niagara Region’s low tax increases, low development charges, and positive incentives (such as Gateway Economic Zone & Centre Community Improvement Plan). In addition, eliminate barriers and red tape for local businesses so that they are able to expand and be Niagara’s ambassadors to the corporate world. If local businesses are satisfied with their ability to do business within the Region, they will communicate this to their customers and suppliers.”

Although D’Angelo is not named in Tamming’s memo, the document specifically suggests several ways to leverage experience as the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority CAO — the position D’Angelo held at the time — when applying for the regional job.

Joan Green of the Phelps Group said interview questions are not sent to candidates in advance of the day of their interview.

In an email to The Standard, she said candidates are given a theme for a presentation they have to give to the committee a few days before the interview day. Candidates do not see interview questions until 15 minutes before the interview starts, she said, so that candidates can familiarize themselves with the language and direction of the questions.

“The Phelps Group does not provide anything other than the presentation topic ahead of the interview day. No talking points or suggested answers are provided,” wrote Green, who provided The Standard with copies of documents sent to D’Angelo before his first interview on Oct. 4, 2016, and his second interview on Oct. 12.

Green said any further questions about the documents downloaded by D’Angelo, including the interview questions, should be directed to the Region.

A closed issue

D’Amboise and Tamming did not respond to multiple interview requests from The Standard to ask why they wrote the documents and why they were sent to D’Angelo.

Caslin declined multiple interview requests. In a short emailed statement, Caslin said regional council had voted the mattered “closed” and criticized The Standard for not turning over its evidence to Toronto lawyer Marvin Huberman, who council hired to examine the matter after the paper’s April expose.

“This matter has been investigated, received by council, and subsequently council voted the matter closed. During the investigation, Mr. Huberman had unfettered access to emails, texts, memos, letters, handwritten notes, calendars and servers,” said Caslin’s statement. “It is unfortunate that this recent ‘finding’ was not produced during the investigation so that the validity of the documents could have been verified by the investigator.”

Caslin did not answer questions about what he knew about the memos and if he directed his staff to write them or send them to D’Angelo.

D’Angelo also declined to be interviewed by The Standard. In an email, he asked the paper to cease writing stories about him.

“Please stop tarnishing and damaging my good name and reputation, it is causing significant stress to my family and I,” D’Angelo wrote in an email.

D’Angelo would not answer questions about who sent him the documents, why he downloaded them and why he did not alert the hiring committee or the Phelps Group when he obtained them.

The Huberman report

Huberman presented his report to regional council on July 5, 2018, and said he found no evidence the hiring of D’Angelo was improper.

However, Huberman did not find any digital evidence and instead relied only on a paper copy of the D’Amboise memo The Standard reported on in April.

His report said that D’Angelo could not clearly recall if he received the D’Amboise memo because he was also applying for the CAO post at the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake in 2016. He also told Huberman his phone was stolen in October 2016 and therefore cannot check his emails from that period.

Huberman said common sense suggests D’Angelo’s answers were “improbable” but he could not find they were not credible or unreliable because they were consistent with other statements by him.

During his presentation, Huberman, who called the newspaper report hearsay, said if he had the evidence used by The Standard, his conclusions may have been different.

Several councillors say they have more questions than answers in the wake of Huberman’s report, and three candidates for regional chair have said they would seek to fire D’Angelo.

For at least one member of the CAO selection committee, Lincoln Mayor Sandra Easton, the newspaper reports and the Huberman probe are deeply unsettling. Easton said from her point of view nothing was wrong during the hiring process.

“It was all run by the Phelps Group. We would show up to a meeting, and they would have the information in binders. We could not leave with them. We had to leave everything with them when we left. It was very tightly controlled,” she said. “I made my decisions based on the information I had. And I made my opinion known in a number of ways during the process.”

However, she said if information was leaked to D’Angelo from members of Caslin’s staff, it raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the process, even though the committee did its job properly.

Easton said with “sober second thought” she has questions about Huberman’s conclusions, and said another investigation may be necessary. To restore public confidence in the Region, she said Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dube would be a possible option.

The other members of the selection committee — Caslin, Grimsby Coun. Tony Quirk, Niagara Falls Coun. Bob Gale and Welland Mayor Frank Campion — did not respond to interview requests.