Legal bills at Kamloops city hall reach new heights with $2M spent in 2025

Legal bills keep reaching new heights at Kamloops city hall as costs near $2 million in 2025.

That’s around four-times the amount spent in 2021, before the last election. Despite planning for another jump in legal fees, it’s more than double what was in the 2025 budget.

Excluding more than $3 million held in trust, taxpayers paid $1.96 million to law firms last year, according to the city’s 2025 statement of financial information.

The largest bill of $1.2 million went to Fulton and Company, where the city’s retained counsel Denise McCabe is a partner. Another $212,000 went to Young Anderson, which handles city council’s code of conduct investigations.

Legal fees are a regular part of city business. It’s not uncommon to pay for legal advice on new bylaws, to take on the odd lawsuit or work on real estate deals.

Kamloops has seen abnormalities since the 2022 and taxpayers are bearing the costs.

There have been numerous code of conduct investigations, a court challenge against the Build Kamloops loan approval, the mayor’s lawsuit against a fellow city councillor and a rise in Freedom of Information requests that have all contributed to the rising legal bills.

Among more than a half-dozen law firms, the costs ranged from around $26,000 to $1.2 million, excluding amounts held in trust.

How much has been spent on each of those items isn’t detailed in the annual financial report, but city council has blamed Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson for more than $1 million in legal fees over the past few years. Much of that likely includes the roughly $300,000 spent on code of conduct investigations since 2023.

Council approved a 2025 budget of $900,000 for legal fees after reaching a new record of $1.6 million in 2024. It’s not clear how much is specifically set aside for legal costs in the 2026 budget.