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This article was published 6/7/2016 (1537 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg's mayor won't acknowledge a link between his decision to suspend the acting chief administration officer in January 2015 and the $567,339 payout Deepak Joshi walked away with when he left city hall.

Brian Bowman faced reporters Wednesday for the first time since last week’s release of the City of Winnipeg’s annual compensation disclosure report, which lists payments to city staff earning $50,000 or more.

ZACHARY PRONG / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Mayor Brian Bowman said provincial confidentiality regulations prevent him from discussing Joshi's 2015 payout.

Bowman said provincial confidentiality regulations prevent him from discussing Joshi's 2015 payout.

"There is provincially mandated privacy rules that preclude us, legally, from being able to comment on personnel matters," Bowman said, echoing a statement released by his office a week ago.

Joshi resigned after Bowman suspended him three months into his term as mayor on the grounds he had lost confidence in the veteran civic employee. The situation at city hall changed for the better as a result, Bowman said Wednesday.

The 2014 compensation disclosure report noted Joshi had been paid $245,899 as acting CAO that year.

Joshi, who was hired in November 2015 as acting executive director of the Red River planning district in Selkirk, did not return phone calls from the Free Press.

Bowman would not say if he was aware that Joshi was entitled to such a large payment when he suspended him or if Joshi had subsequently threatened the city with a lawsuit.

"All I’ll say, broadly speaking, is that I was elected, and this council was elected, to bring positive change to city hall and take city hall in a new direction and we’re doing that," he said.

"The end result is we have a new CAO (Doug McNeil) who has my confidence… who’s taken the unprecedented step, for city hall, to make his contract public. Those are all positive signals and that results from the work that’s happened in the last year-and-a-half."

The mayor said the provincial legislation governing disclosure reports requires changes. He would like the annual report to break down individual compensation into categories — such as salary, overtime and severance — instead of the current lump-sum amount. severance or sick-time payout.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca