Auburn City Councilwoman Virginia Haugen’s trial for obstructing a police investigation starts at 9 a.m. Feb. 20 at Auburn Municipal Court.

Haugen has pleaded innocent to the charge, which stems from an incident July 4 when persons still unknown trespassed onto Burlington Northern Railroad property and put up a sign that read, “Will the last business to leave downtown … Please turn off the lights?”

Obstructing a police investigation is a gross misdemeanor in state law and the city’s code, carrying a maximum penalty of one year in jail and/or a $5,000 fine.

Auburn police learned through their initial investigation that Haugen, who was not involved in the trespassing, had purchased the sign in March 2008 from an Auburn sign shop.

According to police reports, Haugen denied numerous times during her first interview about the matter July 7 at City Hall that she had ever seen the sign before. Finally, police say, she admitted she knew “something about it” but continued to deny any involvement.

Officers said that when they confronted Haugen the following day with a copy of the invoice from the sign company bearing her name, proving that she had ordered and picked up the sign and several others, she dropped her denials.

“All right you got me, I lied,” an investigating officer wrote in the police incident report of Haugen’s response. When officers asked her why she had lied to them, she allegedly replied that she wanted to keep the people involved out of trouble.

Haugen still has not named who those people were. She said the whole incident had been a prank, a commentary on the state of the city’s downtown.

The City of Tacoma’s Prosecutor’s Office is handling the case.