Beltzner. Renzella. Beecher.Those are the three former ORNGE officials who approved the payments that funded Dr. Chris Mazza’s lavish lifestyle.
Rainer Beltzner was the chairman of the board, which oversaw the provincial air ambulance service. ORNGE records show Beltzner and his board signed off on the rapid, $1.2-million increase in payments to Mazza in his last year at the service.
In the expense category, vice-presidents Maria Renzella and Rhoda Beecher signed the documents that reimbursed former president Mazza for his many trips to five-star hotels, ski jaunts and boozy dinners. ORNGE records show Mazza’s expenses were then presented to the “board,” which reviewed them.
When Mazza’s expense records and some of his salary and loan payments were released Friday, it allowed the Star to determine whose signatures approved so many questionable payments at a time when most parts of Ontario’s health-care system were in full austerity mode.
The Star reached out to the three former ORNGE officials for an explanation. Beltzner said he was “disappointed to read of some of the appalling expenses reported to have been claimed by Dr. Mazza” and was looking forward to the results of the OPP investigation. The former chair acknowledged his board of directors made certain approvals, did not comment on his own signature approving payments, and said he did not know who at the board would have reviewed the expenses.
Neither Renzella or Beecher were available to be interviewed. Both testified at the ORNGE hearings last year, along with Beltzner, but since the expenses were not known at the time, MPPs did not raise the issue. The now infamous banker’s box of documents was sent to the committee by ORNGE but Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s proroguing of the legislature halted its release.
ORNGE, which is under new management, has brought in a series of strict rules to prevent further problems. All expenses are now disclosed (with caps on the amount that can be spent for lunch, dinner, etc.), salaries are published, and the new board has members experienced in corporate governance.
Previously, from 2005-2011, the records show a free-for-all, whirlwind of spending. Trips were taken to Brazil, Milan, Germany, Switzerland and New York and Big Sky, Mont., in the United States. Fine hotels were booked and everything from fizzy water to avalanche ski training to lots of food and booze were expensed. The hotel bill at one resort, the Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was $6,000.
The ORNGE records show an executive assistant prepared the expense records, Mazza signed and submitted them, and Renzella and Beecher usually approved them. Over the years, a handful of other executives provided the second signature to Renzella’s.
If an expense report was approved by the executives in, for example, December, it was tabled at a board meeting a month or two later. Those records were then reviewed by the board. The handwriting on those records says “board,” but does not reveal who signed them.
Renzella, a chartered accountant, was paid $434,000 in salary and benefits at ORNGE, and received an all-expenses-paid executive MBA which included a study stint in Belgium. It is not clear how much Beecher, who was on contract and not an employee, was paid. At the Queen’s Park committee, estimates of her annual payments ranged between $300,000 and $500,000. An experienced human resources professional, Beecher was tasked with putting out fires created by her tempestuous boss (Mazza). She referred to the ORNGE founder as HRH — His Royal Highness.
In Beecher’s testimony, she said that by 2011 (a time when Mazza had ramped up his travels and expenses) ORNGE was in trouble financially.
“There was a real sense of crisis around finances for ORNGE,” Beecher testified. “We were told to turn the lights down, we were told to reuse.”
In Renzella’s testimony, she said she was aware of Mazza’s $1.4 million salary. “The salary was determined by the board of directors, and the position I held was to ensure that the payroll matched the salary that was approved.”
Beltzner, in his reply to questions from the Star, said he wanted to point out it was the provincial government that “selected and appointed Mazza.” As to his Mazza’s expenses, he said they “would have been reviewed in detail and approved by another senior executive, typically Maria Renzella.” Beltzner, who was paid $200,000 annually to chair the board, said any “potentially inappropriate expenses should have been flagged and corrected at that time.” He also noted that the Provincial Auditor, which conducted an extensive review, never raised the issue of expenses.
The records reveal that in Mazza’s last year at ORNGE, Beltzner and Renzella signed off on a $500,000 housing loan to Mazza, a $450,000 loan (both also board approved) and the board also approved a $250,000 advance against a future bonus to Mazza. A handwritten notation by Renzella says, “Rainer had approved an advance to Chris.”
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Kevin Donovan
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