One year in, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean earns good marks in overall job performance

In 2020, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean hired a new police chief and a new fire chief, handled rallies in support of the Black Lives Matter movement that were met by violent counterprotesters, issued a mask mandate and health orders in response to a global pandemic, had protesters come to her personal residence and withstood a failed recall attempt.

And that was all in her first year in office.

McLean, the first woman elected Boise mayor, made history in a historically challenging year.

Despite the challenges, McLean has shown herself to be resilient, positive, forward-thinking and resolutely focused on her goals of affordable housing, climate change and economic prosperity.

“While we’ve been sticking our necks out, making calls to protect the health of people — because that’s the foundation of any strong community and solid economy and a recovery ultimately — we have advanced policy initiatives around housing, and we’ve set bold goals and launched the scoping of an incubator in partnership with all different entities around climate to build the economy as we recover,” McLean said in a video interview with the editorial board.

She’s also made difficult decisions about a mask mandate and health orders in the face of fierce public opposition that included a mask-burning protest and picketers outside her home.

She’s continued to focus on homelessness, and she stresses the importance of building consensus and relationships with other government agencies, such as the Ada County Highway District.

The Idaho Statesman editorial board interviewed McLean on Jan. 5, the one-year anniversary of her inauguration. We give McLean high marks overall in her performance so far, with some caveats on things we’d like to see improved.

The city of Boise’s property tax budget has gone from $114 million in 2013 to $160 million in 2020, a 40% increase in just seven years, while Boise’s population has increased only about 8%.

McLean attributed the spike in the city budget to an increase in the demand for services, including police, recycling, infrastructure, parks and libraries. But that doesn’t explain why it’s outpacing population growth by such a large margin.

We’re glad that city leaders last year took a harder look at the city budget and voted to keep the property tax budget flat, forgoing the allowed 3% increase during the pandemic. In future years, even after the pandemic, we’d like to see the mayor leading the discussion on what’s necessary and what can be cut. We want nice things in Boise, and we don’t want to be pennywise and pound-foolish.

We also want a fiscally responsible city government that recognizes double-digit increases in property taxes aren’t sustainable for most residents.

McLean also faced a recall last year, sparked, in part, by a controversial transition committee report that called for declaring Boise a sanctuary city, offering free abortions and teaching sex education in pre-kindergarten.

We accept and agree with her explanation that this was but one among six transition reports, and all of the recommendations are just that — recommendations from a panel, not policy positions. But we question some of the people she chose to advise her for this report, whose radical suggestions offered up red meat for conservatives to attack her. We’re certain some of the recommendations made even her ardent Boise supporters cringe.

We also have concerns about the process that went into hiring Mark Niemeyer as the fire chief. While McLean campaigned on a platform of more transparent government, Niemeyer was named outside the public process and wasn’t one of the finalists named publicly. Niemeyer appears to be an excellent choice for the position, but we believe McLean needs to stick to the open-government stance she promised as a candidate.

Moving forward, in the face of challenges, McLean is rightly focused on economic development and emerging from the pandemic with a thriving business environment.

McLean has had a momentous first year in office and has faced the challenges well. We are confident her trial by fire in 2020 makes her the right person to lead Boise in the right direction.

This story was originally published January 26, 2021 at 4:00 AM.