Ombudsman freezes Regional council iPads
Investigators working for Ontario’s Ombudsman Paul Dube have directed Niagara Region to preserve iPads issued to the out-going regional council as part of its ongoing investigation into the hiring and contract extension of the municipality’s chief administrative officer.
The Standard has learned the Ombudsman has requested the iPads contents not be erased and the devices not sold until the investigation is complete.
In the past, the Region has made the devices available to out-going councillors for purchase at a discount, or they are reformated or reused.
Dube’s office routinely declines to discuss ongoing investigations and a spokeswoman for the Ombudsman’s office declined to comment for this story.
Under the powers of the Ombudsman Act, Dube’s office can require a public agency under investigation to “furnish to him or her any such information, and to produce any documents or things which in the Ombudsman’s opinion relate to any such matter and which may be in the possession or under the control of that person.”
Under the act, anyone who “refuses or wilfully fails to comply with any lawful requirement of the Ombudsman,” faces a fine of up to $500 and a prison term of up to three months.
The Ombudsman is investigating the tainted 2016 hiring process that resulted in D’Angelo getting the regional CAO position, which pays more than $230,000 a year. As CAO, D’Angelo is responsible for the municipality’s $1 billion budget and all of its 3,000 employees.
In a series of stories, The Standard found that D’Angelo downloaded at least six documents before and during the CAO hiring process that a candidate for the job should not have.
Four of those documents
— which included interview questions and confidential information about other CAO candidates — were created by the staff of now-outgoing regional chair Alan Caslin. The other two documents were drafts of confidential chair’s reports on the CAO position before the hiring process began.
The Ombudsman is also looking into D’Angelo’s lucrative contract extension granted him by Caslin without regional council’s consent.
In August, Caslin told regional council he thought he was doing the best thing for the Region by unilaterally extending and expanding upon D’Angelo’s contract in October 2017.
D’Angelo’s original two-year deal expires this month, unless regional council votes to enact an optional two-year extension. According to D’Angelo, that deal was negotiated between himself and Caslin. The Standard learned the regional human resources department, which usually oversees employee contracts, was cut out of the process entirely. Caslin’s office requested the human resources department draw up a “blank” contact and Caslin would fill in the terms during negotiations.
Less than a year into the job, D’Angelo approached Caslin to renegotiate his deal. This new contract extended D’Angelo’s contract to 2022, and gave him a golden parachute of a year’s pay if council did not renew his deal. It also grants him the unusual termination clause of three years pay even if he is fired with cause.
The CAO is an employee of council, not the chair, and the employment terms of a CAO have to be ratified by council. Regional council passed no bylaw approving a new contract or extension for D’Angelo.
Former regional integrity commissioner John Mascarin said the deal given to D’Angelo by Caslin should be “null and void.”
The Ombudsman investigation began on August 30. The office, which has the power to investigate government bodies and agencies in Ontario and submit findings and recommendations, does not publicly disclose the status of an investigation or when a report may be released.
The probe is the third Ombudsman’s investigation into Niagara’s outgoing council.
In 2015, the Ombudsman found a closeddoor meeting held by councillors violated the Municipal Act. Earlier this year, Dube found the Region and council acted illegally when it seized the notes and computer of Standard journalist Bill Sawchuk and expelled him from a December 2017 council meeting.