Buried inside a revised cost spreadsheet produced by the City of Boise in response to a public records request is a single line item that raises a question the city has not answered: how did a Pride flag planning meeting end up charged to Boise's wastewater fund?

Records produced in response to PRRID 2026-1671 show that Hannah Williamson, a Public Art Project Specialist in the city's Arts and History department, attended a March 5, 2026 planning meeting related to the city's response to House Bill 561 -- the state law that banned Pride flags on government property. Her time for that meeting, $13.37, was charged to the "PW Water Renewal Fund" rather than the city's general fund.

It may be a clerical error. It may be something more. The Idaho Fidelity Foundation has filed a public records request to find out.

What the Water Renewal Fund Is

The City of Boise's Water Renewal Fund is not a general operating account. It is a restricted utility fund dedicated to wastewater -- the system that collects, treats, and cleans the used water from every home and business in Boise before it flows back into the Boise River.

Why This Matters -- Even If It's Only $13.37

The dollar amount is small. The legal exposure is not.

Under Idaho and federal law, the size of an improper expenditure from a restricted fund is irrelevant to whether a violation occurred. One penny charged to a fund for an unauthorized purpose is the same offense as one million dollars. The question is not how much -- it is whether any amount was authorized.

The Water Renewal Fund carries two layers of legal restriction, and both matter here.

State law: Idaho Code Section 50-1013 governs municipal utility funds and generally requires that utility revenues be used only for the purposes of that utility. The Water Renewal Fund is a ratepayer utility fund -- money collected from Boise sewer customers specifically to treat wastewater. Using even a single dollar of it for a non-utility purpose without specific legal authorization could constitute a misappropriation of restricted public funds under Idaho law -- a matter the Attorney General's office has statutory authority to investigate, regardless of the amount.

Federal law: The $263 million WIFIA loan from the EPA comes with binding loan covenants that restrict how the funds -- and the accounts they flow through -- may be used. Federal loan agreements of this type typically include representations that loan proceeds and related utility revenues will be used only for authorized project purposes. Charging unrelated expenses to a fund tied to a federal loan agreement -- even payroll coding errors that are never corrected -- can technically constitute a breach of those covenants. The EPA's WIFIA program conducts compliance oversight and has enforcement mechanisms. There is no de minimis exception in federal loan covenant law.

To be clear: this may be a clerical error. A payroll system may have assigned Williamson's time to the wrong cost center, and someone may have already caught and corrected it. The public records request will answer exactly that. But if no correction was made and no authorization exists, the city has a potential problem at both the state and federal level -- and the dollar amount is no defense.

What the Idaho Fidelity Foundation Is Asking For

On June 10, 2026, the Idaho Fidelity Foundation submitted a public records request to the City of Boise (PRRID 2026-1857) asking for:

Context: $53,240.69 in Confirmed Spending -- and Still Rising

The Water Renewal Fund charge is one small piece of a larger picture. Across three public records responses, the Idaho Fidelity Foundation has confirmed $53,240.69 in taxpayer expenditures tied to Boise's Pride flag program and post-HB 561 display -- including $16,361.70 spent on the workaround display itself in 2026, more than 2.76 times what Mayor McLean disclosed to the public.