CAO report leaves questions unanswered
D’Angelo contradicts section that says he had list of candidates names for NOTL job
Niagara Region's CAO says he did not receive the candidate biographies when he applied for the top staff job in Niagara-onthe-Lake in 2016, even though a lawyer's report says he did.
However, Marvin Huberman of the Toronto firm ADR Chambers, hired by the Region to examine the hiring of Carmen D'Angelo, refused to discuss the difference between his report and D'Angelo's account.
Reached at his office in Toronto, Huberman said he couldn’t comment on D’Angelo’s statement about the Niagara-on-the-Lake CAO’s position, and what was written in the report.
“I can’t do it,” Huberman said. “It is inappropriate for me to comment after the fact on something he just told you.”
The discrepancy is just one of several being raised about Huberman's report and methods.
One of the sections raising eyebrows dealt with D’Angelo’s application for another job, the CAO position at the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Paragraph 74 of the report said D’Angelo couldn’t remember if he received the memo from D’Amboise because he said he “received a lot of documents including ... biographies of candidates” for the Niagara-on-the-Lake CAO position.
D’Angelo said Wednesday he never had the names and biographies of the other candidates for the Niagara-on-the-Lake position. D’Angelo withdrew his name from contention for the position in Niagara-on-the-Lake when he learned Niagara Region CAO Harry Schlange had publicly announced his resignation. Schlange’s resignation prompted him to “change his career goals,” he said.
D’Angelo said there were two recruitment processes for the Niagara-on-the-Lake CAO position in 2016. He was part of the first, which was managed by executive search firm Odgers and Berndtson.
“All applicants to the NOTL CAO, including myself, would have received briefing documents, opportunity briefs, which would include a candidate profile,” he said in clarifying what information he received. “The candidate profile would be an
outline of characteristics the Town was seeking in a new CAO. This material would have been provided by Odgers and Berndtson when they were recruiting candidates. The names and biographies of other candidates were not provided.”
The report by ADR Chambers was prepared by Toronto lawyer Huberman, who was hired to act as an ombudsman. Standard reporter Grant LaFleche sparked the investigation with a series of stories on irregularities in the hiring of the CAO.
Niagara-on-the-Lake Lord Mayor Patrick Darte didn’t respond to an email or phone call about the job search. Neither did the town clerk.
Safeguarding the privacy of the candidates is essential to the hiring process, Huberman said in his report. It protects the candidate’s status with their current employers, and preserves the reputation of the town, which would suffer if it failed in something as fundamental as a guarantee of confidentiality.
Regional council voted on July 5 to approve Huberman’s report, and declared the matter closed. It also narrowly voted 13-11 to apologize to D’Angelo and D’Amboise.
In the report, Huberman accepted D’Angelo’s claim that he didn’t receive a memo that contained confidential information on the candidates for the Region’s CAO position. The memo was a list of talking points prepared by Regional Chair Alan Caslin’s policy director, Rob D’Amboise.
Huberman said D’Angelo’s recollections were imprecise. He also said D’Angelo couldn’t check his cellphone for the memo — because the device was stolen in October of 2016.
Huberman found D’Angelo’s answers “improbable,” but concluded he couldn’t find they weren’t credible, based on the evidence he considered.
Former Regional chair Debbie Zimmerman has joined in a growing chorus of people who are troubled with aspects of the report.
“I’m a bystander now, but as an ex-regional chair and an excouncillor, there are some obvious questions that need to be asked,” said Zimmerman, who served two terms as Regional chair starting in 1997. “That’s my perspective. I’m asking the same questions a lot of folks who watched the meeting would ask. There are some obvious issues that were overlooked.”
“Why didn’t anybody check the server?” asked Zimmerman, who left politics for a job in the private sector in 2014. “My emails come to my cellphone from my computer, which is attached to a server.
“He didn’t lose his computer. They didn’t lose the server. At least I hope they didn’t — because if that’s the case, we have a huge problem.
“Since the ADR report took his word at face value, why dismiss all the reporting that was done by the newspaper? I find that odd. He took the word of the CAO that he lost his cellphone — which is fine — but he didn’t go any further? He could have heard all the information from all the sources and then decided what weight to give it.”
Huberman said interviewing the anonymous sources wasn’t possible in his role of ombudsman.
Meeting the sources and receiving their information with a promise of anonymity would unfairly “fetter” the process. It could put Huberman in the position of having information he can’t reference, which could compromise the credibility of his final report, especially if the information contradicted evidence he had from identifiable sources, according to Huberman.
“It makes it such that I cannot effectively do my job, and that makes it anathema to what a credible, independent, fair ombudsman should be,” he said. “It’s a non-starter. No one should be surprised, or shocked or disappointed when I can't use that sort of information as an ombudsman under the Municipal Act.”
Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop was instrumental in amending the motion passed in the spring that brought in ADR Chambers for the investigation. His amendment ensured the investigator would have all the powers available to a municipal ombudsman. Those powers are expansive and include the ability to issue subpoenas — an avenue Huberman didn’t pursue.
“Mr. Huberman is a very experienced lawyer and quite skilled,” Redekop said. “I hesitate to second-guess his work. The purpose of the amendment of the original motion was to make sure he had broad powers for a full investigation.”
Redekop said he found curious the parts of the report that dealt with the D’Amboise memo, which was used for a verbal report to Caslin. Redekop wondered how a document that was supposed to have been created exclusively for the Regional chair — and which D’Amboise testified he shredded — ended up being transmitted to a third party. That was never explained.
“He (Huberman) didn’t take an in-depth look at some of the digital capabilities of the Region has in retaining this kind of stuff,” Redekop said. “It also didn’t appear that he looked at the computers at the Conservation Authority, which I believe is where we heard the memo the newspaper received originated.
“Some questions remain outstanding, but he has completed his work. I understand his position of not wanting to rely on anonymous people or people who don’t want to be identified. I get that.”
Redekop said Huberman looked at the report through the lens of a court proceeding. As a result, he only assessed facts available from identifiable sources.
“Some of the information he had was at odds with what the newspaper reported,” Redekop said. “I believe some of the sources walked back some of the statements that were made to the reporter.
“(Huberman) took great pains to listen to what they were telling him, not what they told someone else.
“He has made his recommendations, and unless there is new information that would warrant reviewing his decision, I think it is closed — and that’s how I voted.”
Zimmerman questioned why the report was withheld from councillors until just before the start of the meeting, allowing them no time to digest the contents and formulate questions for Huberman.
“It wasn’t an in-camera report,” she said. “It was a public report that anybody would eventually be able to access on the website. Could it not have been sent out the council before the meeting?”
In an emailed statement, Caslin said the ombudsman’s report was placed on the agenda before the meeting as “a normal course of business.”
He pointed out the motion for the investigation approved by council stated, “the independent third-party report was to be delivered directly to a quorum of Regional Council.”
Caslin went on to write the ombudsman reviewed over 200,000 electronic documents and that in his role as Regional Chair, he had “full confidence in his work and the report and recommendations adopted by council.
“Any attempt to discredit the ombudsman is nothing more than politicking in advance of October’s municipal election,” he added.
Caslin’s full statement is available on-line.