Cost of Boise’s racism investigation increases. Here’s how much it’s risen for taxpayers
A Washington, D.C. law firm is set to present its findings from an investigation into potential racism at the Boise Police Department on Tuesday, and the cost of the investigation has risen by 30%.
Michael Bromwich, a lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson who has been leading the investigation, is scheduled to present to the Boise City Council at a Tuesday afternoon meeting. The council’s consent agenda — which contains a list of items that generally pass without discussion — includes an additional $150,000 for the investigation. In December, the council approved an initial $500,000.
Council Member Jimmy Hallyburton, who is a member of the council’s leadership team along with Council President Holli Woodings, told the Idaho Statesman by phone Monday that the extra $150,000 has been available to Steptoe for some time, and was needed to ensure the law firm could produce a final product for the city.
The investigation was launched after revelations that a retired, veteran captain espoused racist views. In November, a pseudonymous video interview and blog posts on a white supremacist website were linked to Matt Bryngelson, who worked for the Boise Police Department for close to 24 years and hosted a podcast for the department until his retirement last year.
Mayor Lauren McLean tasked investigators with uncovering whether racism had “infected” the department’s work, and in the months since, Steptoe has made trips to Boise, interviewing current and former police department employees as well as other city employees and officials. The firm also created a website and has been accepting tips.
Probe costs can rise for cities
When the investigation began, Bromwich indicated that its length was uncertain and would require exercising judgment. Such probes can be expensive and time-consuming. More than 15 years ago, Bromwich led an investigation into the Houston Police Department’s crime lab that took two years and cost $5.3 million, according to the Houston Chronicle. More recently, Bromwich conducted a high-profile investigation of the Baltimore Police Department, which included more than 160 interviews and reviews of two decades of police documents. A final report ran over 600 pages and detailed extensive problems at the police department.
Bromwich formerly served as inspector general at the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Conducting investigations like this are all about exercising judgment about what is worth pursuing and what is not worth pursuing,” he told the council in December.
In March, the law firm’s investigation came to a halt when it ran out of funds, as first reported by BoiseDev.
Since then, the investigators have stopped their work. It is unclear exactly when the additional funds were made available to Steptoe, but Hallyburton said city officials have known for some time that additional funds would be needed to get a final report completed.
“I think that we kind of ran to the end of the funds (and) needed some additional funds to get a report back, which is what we’ll see (on Tuesday),” Hallyburton told the Statesman. He said he understood the $150,000 to be discretionary funds already available to McLean’s office.
Included in the Tuesday meeting agenda is a document altering the contract to include the additional funds. The document was prepared May 5.
Boise officials prepare for presentation on investigation
Hallyburton said he, Woodings, McLean and the mayor’s chief of staff, Courtney Washburn, met with Bromwich on Monday morning to discuss the coming presentation. He said the meeting entailed an overview from Bromwich about the investigation’s timeline, as well as what he is going to cover at Tuesday’s public meeting. Hallyburton said the discussion aimed to make sure everyone was “on the same page” about what will be discussed.
But Hallyburton said the information so far has been “pretty vague,” and that the substance of any findings will be revealed at Tuesday’s presentation.
Bromwich also discussed the investigation about a month ago with the council during an executive session, Hallyburton said, and council members have been in contact with the law firm as part of the investigation.
A spokesperson for McLean’s office, Maria Weeg, told the Statesman that there “haven’t been any kind of formal presentations about what’s been found and what hasn’t been found” in the investigation. But she said the mayor’s office staff have had some conversations with the firm about how the investigation is going.
In an email, Weeg said that “the scope of the investigation has not changed.” Once the $500,000 had been expended, and the investigation paused, she said “city staff worked with Steptoe to determine what would be needed to tie up loose ends, prepare a presentation and recommend next steps.”
Weeg previously told the Statesman that “the minutiae of the spending is less interesting to (McLean) than making sure” the Boise Police Department, a department with an $80-million-plus budget, is “looked at with an independent eye to make sure we’re ensuring safety, accountability, and justice.”
This story was originally published May 15, 2023 at 1:23 PM.
