D’Angelo downloaded questions for all 2016 CAO interviews
It turns out Carmen D’Angelo had help every step along his road to become Niagara Region’s top paid bureaucrat.
A recent review of documents obtained by the Standard about the tainted 2016 regional chief administrative officer hiring process shows D’Angelo had advance copies of questions for his first and final interviews for the position.
Digital information in the documents shows D’Angelo downloaded a memo on Oct. 2, 2016, containing the questions for his Oct. 4, 2016, interview with the hiring committee, led by then-regional chair Alan Caslin.
The Standard previously reported D’Angelo also downloaded a memo containing questions for his final interview on Oct 12, 2016. However, the review of documents reveals that the memo downloaded on Oct. 10, 2016, contained both interview questions and point-form notes of suggested answers.
Last July, the Standard presented the document from Oct. 2, 2016 as the one D’Angelo downloaded eight days later. They are, in fact, separate documents.
Both documents, which are plain Microsoft Word files that do not contain the letterhead of the region or the Phelps Group — the Toronto firm that was hired to run the CAO recruiting process — were created by Caslin’s then-policy director Robert D’Amboise.
It is not clear who wrote the point-form answers contained in the final interview questions memo.
Topics covered in the final interview question memo included transit, economic growth and relationship between the region and Niagara’s lower-tier municipalities.
The memo also says D’Angelo could be asked questions about regional procurement policies and about then-controversial St. Catharines regional councillor Andy Petrowski.
This brings the total number of known documents D’Angelo downloaded before and during the CAO hiring process to seven.
The Standard previously reported D’Angelo had downloaded at least six documents that a candidate for the position should not have, including drafts of confidential chair’s reports on the CAO post, confidential information about other candidates and answers to a written submission D’Angelo had to present to the hiring committee.
According to the digital information embedded in the documents, the memos containing interview questions and candidate information were created by D’Amboise. The memo answers for the written submission was created by Caslin’s then-communications director Jason Tamming.
The data does not show who created drafts of the chair’s reports on the CAO. However, the Standard previously reported that Caslin’s staff, along with the legal and human resources departments, had access to those documents while they were being written.
The other CAO candidates contacted by the Standard said they did not receive any documents from Caslin’s office in 2016.
Caslin and D’Angelo did not respond to an interview request for this story.
D’Angelo’s download of documents from Caslin’s office before and during the CAO hiring process was revealed by the Standard in a more than year-long series of investigative stories.
That series also revealed that in 2017 Caslin unilaterally awarded D’Angelo a lucrative and secret contract extension that gave him three year’s pay even if he was fired with cause. Regional council had no knowledge of the contract extension and passed no bylaws authorizing it.
In August, Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dubé launched an investigation into D’Angelo’s hiring, his contract extension and the Niagara Region’s response when concerns were raised about the CAO selection process.
In his annual report released Tuesday, Dubé said the investigation is concluded and he is writing a draft of his report that will include his findings and recommendations. After he receives the region’s response, Dubé will publish his final report, which is expected to be released before the end of the summer.