A judge Tuesday ordered Larimer County to publicly disclose the narrative portions of performance evaluations for two former employees of The Ranch, the county’s fairgrounds complex and events center.

In response to an April 18 Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request from Chris Wood, editor and publisher of BizWest, the county had gone to court seeking an order allowing it to withhold the documents. David Ayraud, deputy county attorney, contended the employees “maintain an expectation of privacy.”

But, after conducting an in camera review of the narratives, Larimer County District Court Judge C. Michelle Brinegar decided “the compelling public interest in access to the information” outweighs the expectation of privacy for Chris Ashby and Diana Frick, who resigned their positions as The Ranch’s director and assistant director, respectively.

Public employees have a legitimate expectation of privacy in their personnel files, Brinegar wrote in her order, but “the expectation of privacy is not … without limits. The reasonable expectation of privacy may depend significantly upon the nature of the position. For example, a high ranking or elected official may have a far lesser expectation of privacy given their specific position. An ordinary employee would likely have a far greater expectation of privacy.”