City won’t release former Kamloops CAO’s severance agreement

The City of Kamloops was clear about its former top bureaucrat’s reason for leaving, but it has stonewalled any information about any agreements with him.

iNFOnews.ca filed a Freedom of Information request this week for a copy of the agreement with David Trawin, but the city refused to provide a copy or acknowledge such an agreement exists. 

The former chief administrative officer’s resignation was announced last week, coming after more than a year away from the job on medical leave. Officials have so far refused to provide any details beyond what was contained in a news release.

Trawin pointed directly at Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson as the reason for his resignation, blaming Hamer-Jackson for making his job “unsustainable and untenable.”

When iNFOnews.ca requested a copy of any severance agreements reached with Trawin, the city said settlement privilege and privacy reasons precluded its release. It cited an Information and Privacy Commissioner decision from 2021 which allowed another BC city to block the release of multiple severance agreements at once.

It was only five years ago the severance agreement with the former CAO of the Thompson Nicola Regional District, Sukh Gill, was released publicly, also through a Freedom of Information request.

His departure was initially announced as a retirement, as per the agreement, and it included continued salary payments totalling $455,300, a new smartphone and his regional district laptop.

A Kamloops This Week investigation into Gill’s so-called retirement and spending at the regional district prompted a damning forensic audit, though his departure has not been tied directly to spending.

Trawin’s resignation is under entirely different circumstances in that he blamed the mayor and his conduct for leaving the job he held for more than a decade.

The city will have to report at least some information about Trawin’s severance agreement next year through annual financial reports, but it will be anonymized. The report will include how many employees it reached such agreements with and how many weeks’ worth of payment they received.

In 2024, the city settled with one unnamed employee and they got six weeks’ salary based on whatever they were earning at the time.