Caslin’s office helped CAO with job application
Carmen D’Angelo told regional councillors he received help from the office of Regional Chair Alan Caslin in 2016 to improve his candidacy for the $230,000-a-year chief administrative officer job, The Standard has learned.
During a closed session of regional council on July 26, D’Angelo told councillors that when he was asked to prepare a written submission for the CAO hiring committee, he asked for and received help from Jason Tamming, Caslin’s then personal communications director.
Multiple sources at the meeting said D’Angelo confirmed he asked for Tamming’s help because he is a “communications expert.”
As a candidate for the CAO post, D’Angelo was sent five questions from the Phelps Group — the firm running the CAO recruitment process — to be answered in a written submission for the hiring committee at his final interview.
According to councillors in the closed meeting, D’Angelo said he sent the questions and some of his suggested answers to Tamming, who provided his feedback in a memo.
The language in that memo was used, sometimes nearly verbatim, in D’Angelo’s written submission.
In 2016, Tamming worked directly for Caslin, who was also the chair of the hiring committee. After D’Angelo was hired, Tamming was promoted to the director of corporate communications for the Region and answers to the CAO.
The Standard first reported on Tamming’s involvement in aiding D’Angelo in a July 26 expose which found D’Angelo downloaded at least four memos from two members of Caslin’s staff while he was a candidate for CAO.
In addition to the Tamming memo, which was only about the written submission, D’Angelo downloaded three memos written by Caslin’s policy director, Robert D’Amboise. Two of those memos contained confidential information about other CAO candidates,
and one contained 11 questions for the oral CAO interview.
Candidates should not receive information about their competition and only received the interview questions from the Phelps Group 15 minutes before their interview.
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.
Caslin did not respond to interview requests from The Standard, nor replied to questions asking if he knew that Tamming had assisted D’Angelo, if he directed Tamming to do so and if he knew about the D’Amboise memos.
Caslin was asked about the CAO hiring process during Tuesday morning’s CKTB 610 A.M. broadcast.
In response to questions from reporter Noelle Sinclair-Iorfida, Caslin said he was unaware of The Standard’s stories on the hiring process because he doesn’t read the newspaper.
He pointed to the July 5 report by Toronto lawyer Marvin Huberman, who was hired by regional council to investigate the CAO’s hiring after The Standard’s first expose on the subject in April reported D’Angelo had downloaded a D’Amboise memo containing candidate information in 2016.
Huberman’s report found no evidence the hiring of D’Angelo was improper. However, Huberman did not find any digital evidence.
Huberman wrote that D’Angelo provided “improbable” answers to his questions, but he could not find they were not credible because they were consistent with other statements he made.
Council accepted Huberman’s report, passed a motion apologizing to D’Angelo and voted the matter closed.
However, councillor questions about Huberman’s report and the publication of The Standard’s July 26 expose resulted in council reopening the issue.
On July 26, council voted to ask staff to search regional servers for the documents and asked Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, where D’Angelo worked in 2016, to search its servers.
The Region’s search will be supervised by Western University political science professor Andrew Sancton, an expert in municipal government with no experience in investigating computer systems.
NPCA did not respond to multiple interview requests and did not answer questions asking if the authority will do a search, how it will be conducted, and if a document preservation order has been imposed to protect evidence.
Tamming did not respond to an interview request from The Standard or answer questions about why he assisted D’Angelo and if Caslin knew.
Interview requests to D’Angelo were not acknowledged, and questions why he received help from Tamming, and if he had discussions with Caslin in 2016 about the Tamming and D’Amboise memos were not answered.