Boise took its Pride flag down. But new art has popped up at City Hall. What it cost
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Carolyn Komatsoulis, Idaho Statesman
BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — The flag saga continues.
Some Idaho lawmakers have tried to bring down Boise’s pride flag since last year, ultimately succeeding this year after the Legislature added a fine for violating a 2025 law that banned pride and many other flags on government property. Boise’s City Council had made the pride flag an official flag to get around the 2025 law.
Rep. Ted Hill, R-Eagle, brought two bills this year to address the flag law. Ultimately, Gov. Brad Little signed one of his bills on March 31. It provides a $2,000 fine per flag per day and allows the attorney general to sue. The law bans official city flags added after Jan. 1, 2023. The day Little signed the bill, the city took down the pride flag, which has flown for years.
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But Boise is responding: Thick rainbow stripes in the colors of the progress pride flag stretched up the flagpoles almost all the way up to the flags themselves Tuesday afternoon, and a large white sign emblazoned with the progress rainbow sat on City Hall windows overlooking Capitol Boulevard. The progress pride flag adds the colors of the trans flag to those of the traditional pride flag, and its black-and-brown stripes represent people of color, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
The art appears to be drawing some attention; one woman, getting out of her parked car on Tuesday, noticed the poles and pointed them out to her companion.
“Creating a city for everyone,” the sign said, the latter word colored from red to purple.
Boise spokesperson Maria Ortega confirmed in an email that the city is responsible for rainbow lights on City Hall, the wrapped flagpoles and the window display. The window display and the flagpoles cost just under $6,000, Ortega said, and came from the city’s existing operating budget. The lights did not cost additional money, she said.
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“The art additions to city hall demonstrate our unwavering commitment to the people that call Boise home and to the values that we uphold every day of being a safe and welcoming city for everyone,” Boise Mayor Lauren McLean said in an emailed statement.
Hill told the Statesman on Tuesday that he was expecting something like this, though he had guessed there would be a mural. (Similarly, a group of Boise employees heading out across the shady city plaza around noon discussed among themselves that they had thought there would be paint involved).
Hill said it was too early to tell whether lawmakers would bring a bill to address the workaround.
“She’s insulting everyone else,” Hill said in a phone interview, referring to the Boise Mayor. “Is that City Hall or some activist Pride Hall?”
At least one Boise official had hinted at finding another way around the law. Council Member and former state Rep. Colin Nash, on the day the flag came down, told a Boise City Council audience that “the flag is not our only form of expression.”
“I’m excited for what both us and the community can come up with as other ways to identify our solidarity with each of you,” Nash said.
McLean has been clear about her support for the LGBTQ+ community. She took the pride flag down minutes after Little signed the bill but said in a statement that LGBTQ+ residents are “an essential part of Boise. You are welcome here. You belong here. And no law can change that.”
She also spoke at LatinX Pride in 2025, where she told attendees that the world faced “uncertain times.”
In the past couple of years, lawmakers have been targeting signs and flags. In 2025, Sen. Tammy Nichols, R-Middleton, and Hill brought a bill that prevents public schools from flying religious, political and ideological flags or banners. The legislation brought a firestorm when West Ada School District leadership asked a teacher to take down her “Everyone Is welcome here” sign in advance of the bill becoming law. That law took effect in July 2025.
But even that showed the limits and loopholes of these bills. When asked, Nichols, the co-sponsor, said the bill wouldn’t apply in that situation because the sign was a poster. The law only dealt with flags, she said.