Rebecca Hupp, Boise’s airport director, remained the highest-paid city employee in 2025. Hupp, who has presided over record-breaking traffic at the airport, earns $339,000, according to data from the city of Boise.
Many of the lowest-paid employees work in the Parks and Recreation Department, like some Zoo Boise front-gate attendants paid $12 per hour.
But some employees’ salaries didn’t stop with their regular pay: The city paid out over $5 million in overtime, according to an Idaho Statesman analysis of Boise’s pay data. That includes a police sergeant and a member of the Fire Department who each earned over $70,000 in overtime in 2025.
Without overtime, the average Boise pay is just above $67,000.
Six city employees topped $200,000 a year: Police Chief Chris Dennison, the mayor’s Chief of Staff Courtney Washburn, Public Works Director Stephan Burgos, and three Boise Airport officials: Hupp, Elizabeth Sumner and Kathleen Watkins.
Search the pay of Boise’s full-time city employees in the Statesman’s database below. (If your device doesn’t display the search fields, click here.)
MORE Why did we make this public? Public employees work for taxpayers. Their salaries and wages are public information. Idaho state employee pay has been publicly available on various websites, including the Idaho Statesman’s, for years. But there hasn’t always been an easy way to see what Treasure Valley local governments pay their employees. We believe there is value in opening the curtains to show how governments spend taxpayer money. Not only can that sunshine help prevent and catch fraud, waste and abuse, it lets us see how wages differ between, and within, the many offices of our local governments. Have an idea for another database? Think we should make more information public? Contact us at newsroom@idahostatesman.com or tips@idahostatesman.com. How did we get the data? We requested payroll and overtime data from local governments in December 2025. First, this is a snapshot in time. Employees are hired, fired, promoted and given raises every day. Second, employees aren’t all paid the same way. For the most part, you can figure out an employee’s annual pay by multiplying their hourly rate by 2,080. But that’s not always true. Some employees are part-time. Some, like council members, are paid a set amount. Others, especially emergency first responders like firefighters and police officers, can work nontraditional hours and/or get overtime. Their annual pay may be higher — in some cases much higher — than their hourly rate would suggest. Finally, the “hire date” isn’t necessarily the date that person first joined the ranks of public servants. Some employees are seasonal, temporary or took other jobs between stints working for the city or county.…Read more by Carolyn Komatsoulis