The current and former top bureaucrats for the city of Kamloops took home a combined $1.12 million between the two of them last year.

Both received an income of more than $300,000, but former chief administrative officer David Trawin also signed a $412,000 settlement before he officially left the city payroll.

For more than a year, Kamloops was in the unusual position of paying two men for the top job while Trawin was on an extended leave.

He officially left the post last summer, but that was nine months after the city announced Byron McCorkell was hired for the top spot.

According to city financial records, McCorkell was paid $325,824 in salary in 2025. The same year, Trawin was paid $384,871.

Corporate services director David Hallinan said Trawin’s payout included his salary and unused vacation time, but it doesn’t include the June 2025 settlement of $412,361.

He added that “a portion” of the $384,871 payout was also covered through employee benefits as he was on a medical leave, which begin at least by March 2024.

He was one of three top bureaucrats to leave a local government in Kamloops with a severance agreement in the past five years.

The settlement was announced last summer, in which the city and Trawin pinned blame on Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson for Trawin’s departure and the risk of litigation. It fell a few thousand dollars short of the 2020 severance agreement for former Thompson Nicola Regional District CAO Sukh Gill, whose departure was embroiled in controversy, while the cost of the Kamloops-Thompson School District superintendent’s departure in 2025 remains a mystery.

Between McCorkell and Trawin, the total in Kamloops came to $1.12 million paid to chief administrative officers at Kamloops city hall. It’s the only job that earned a city employee more than $300,000 in Kamloops and, for the second year in a row, there were two men paid for that role.

In 2024, McCorkell earned $300,823 and Trawin, who was largely paid through employee benefits that year, earned $216,669.

For the same job, Okanagan cities like Vernon, Penticton and West Kelowna paid their top city managers on average $267,000 in 2025. Kelowna’s city manager Doug Gilchrist, meanwhile, was paid the most at nearly $374,000.