The City of Vancouver is refusing to say how much the municipality’s top civil servant was paid to leave his job last month, breaking with a tradition of transparency established in past years.

In response to a freedom of information request from Postmedia News, city hall refused to release any further details about the July 22 departure of city manager Paul Mochrie, including his severance pay.

The city said details related to Mochrie’s exit are shielded because of what’s known as “common law settlement privilege,” which protects communications made for the purpose of settling a dispute.

“The whole reason we proactively release this stuff is because it helps us to make informed decisions about the functioning of our institutions. Routine public disclosure of this kind of information is

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