Illegal campaign contribution earns Durango School District 9R a lawsuit

An illegal election campaign contribution from Durango School District 9-R towards one of its school board members is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser on behalf of the Elections Division of the Secretary of State.

Board member Katie Stewart was given favoritism by Durango School District 9R when they contributed something of value to her campaign.

The problem of electoral advocacy arose after Katie Stewart–a member of the Durango School District 9-R Board of Education–had announced her candidacy for the General Assembly in House District 59.

Earlier this year, questions arose about whether Stewart was capable of serving on both the General Assembly and the school district at the same time. Also in question is the legality of serving both positions at the same time.

However, it was in January 2024 when the Durango School District 9-R used public time and resources to draft a letter on behalf of Katie Stewart, a candidate for the Colorado General Assembly, according to the Complaint.

Specifically, the illegal campaign contribution is further articulated in Claim One of Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser’s Complaint for the Electoral Division:

“That letter was then posted to the District’s website and distributed to the District’s email newsletters to both district parents and employees.”

“The purpose of the letter was to assuage growing concerns amongst the electorate that Stewart was unable to serve effectively both on the school board and in the General Assembly.”

“By attempting to assuage this concern, the District—a political subdivision—provided a thing of value to Stewart for the purpose of promoting her election to the General Assembly.”

“The Division is entitled to relief under Article XXVIII of the Colorado Constitution and the Fair Campaign Practices Act, § 1-45-101 et seq.”

The Complaint also contextualizes that under Colorado law, government entities are prohibited from making “any contribution in campaigns involving the nomination, retention, or election of any person to any public office.” § 1-45-117(1)(a)(I) C.R.S. (2023).

Furthermore, the Complaint states that a contribution is defined, in relevant part, as “[a]nything of value given, directly or indirectly, to a candidate for the purpose of promoting the candidate’s nomination, retention, recall, or election.” Colo. Const. art. XXVIII, § 2(5)(a)(IV).

At the time of this writing, the school district and the Elections Division had agreed to a settlement agreement.

A Motion to Stay the proceedings was filed around April 8, 2024. The motion basically stops the court proceedings while the Deputy Secretary of State reviews the agreement for his approval.

If and when the agreement is finalized, the Division will dismiss the proceedings.

Details of the complaint can be found on the Tracer website, which is updated and listed on the Administrative Hearing Officer Docket page of the Colorado Secretary of State website.

Illegal electoral advocacy letter drafted with ChatGPT by Public Information Officer

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s Complaint revealed how Durango School District 9-R Public Information Officer Karla Sluis used ChatGPT to generate an artificial intelligence (AI) blurb for Board Member Katie Stewart.

ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot developed by OpenAI, according to Wikipedia. Based on a large language model, ChatGPT enables users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language, Wikipedia said.

Public Information Officer Karla Sluis relied on ChatGPT to draft an illegal electoral message for Board Member Katie Stewart.

The Complaint raises the question as to what extent Public Information Officer Karla Sluis relies on ChatGPT to write press releases for the District News web page.

“To address these concerns, the District’s Public Information Officer (“PIO”) drafted a short news blurb. That blurb noted that “[a]ccording to state statute, school board members may hold both offices at one time,” the Complaint said.

“The Blurb also indicated that “Katie would like to share the following message with our staff and school families.”

“During business hours, the PIO also drafted a letter intended to follow this blurb, signed by Stewart.”

“To draft the letter, the PIO used an Artificial Intelligence Large Language Model, Chat-GPT. The PIO’s prompt to Chat-GPT included the lines: “You are Katie Stewart, a current board member of Durango School District 9-R,” “[y]ou are announcing that you are a candidate for the state representative position,” and “your candidacy is legal and Colorado law doesn’t prohibit holding dual roles at the state and local level.”

“The PIO and Stewart both made minimal edits to the letter generated by Chat-GPT. Among other things, the final version “assure[d] [readers] that [Stewart’s] candidacy for state representative will not in any way affect [her] ability to effectively govern on the school board.”

“On information and belief, the purpose of the letter was to inform the voters that Stewart could be effective while holding both offices.”

“The blurb and letter were then posted on the District’s website.”

“The blurb and letter were also sent out as part of the District’s email newsletter to district parents, which is distributed to over 6,000 email addresses.”

“Finally, the blurb and letter were distributed to in an email newsletter to the District’s employees, which included over 1,000 unique email addresses.”

Public Information Officer Karla Sluis. Image taken for news purposes and fair use from District 9-R’s website.

Durango School District 9-R Public Information Officer Karla Sluis did respond to questions that I sent her digitally for this story. Her response is included in second post on this website.

District 9-R Superintendent Karen Cheser did not respond to a voicemail message that I left on her cellular phone seeking questions for this story.

Moreover, it appears that the illegal electoral advocacy for Katie Stewart that was previously published on January 18, 2024 on the Draft News page of the Durango School District 9R has now been removed from the District’s web page.

Image taken for news purposes and fair use from the school district’s website.