Former Eagle Mountain mayor Brian Olsen will stand trial on allegations that he falsified expense reports while in office.

Following his preliminary hearing in August, Olsen filed a motion asking 4th District Judge David Mortensen to dismiss the seven counts of misusing public money, arguing that the prosecution did not establish that Olsen illegally misappropriated public funds. Mortensen felt that the prosecution had met its burden of proof after hearing oral arguments from both sides on Friday. Trial dates will be set at a Feb. 15 scheduling conference.

Olsen is accused of falsifying travel expense reports and improperly taking reimbursement from the city for official functions that he did not attend. Olsen served as mayor for 10 months and resigned in October 2006.

Ron Yengich, Olsen's attorney, said that some of the reimbursement his client received was requested in advance for events he was later unable to attend, and said Eagle Mountain did not have any official policies in place that defined the proper procedure for reimbursing the city in such circumstances.

"For whatever reason, the city ... had come up with no rules or regulations whatsoever in that regard," Yengich said.

Prosecutor Chad Grunander argued that Olsen's reimbursement requests were explicit attempts to misappropriate city funds, noting that some were made after Olsen knew he would be unable to attend events, or even during the events themselves. As Eagle Mountain's chief budget officer, Olsen had the authority to spend city money, Grunander said, but only on legitimate city expenses.

Grunander considered the lack of official policy regarding reimbursement to the city to be irrelevant, saying one could imagine an infinite number of circumstances in which there is no city policy regarding certain uses of public money. There is no policy, for example, stating that city money could not be used to pay for personal vacations or cars.

"He did not have free reign over the city's money," Grunander said. "Brian Olsen was never entitled to the money because he never incurred the expenses."

At Olsen's preliminary hearing, his former executive assistant, Angie Ferre, testified that Olsen submitted an expense report for a meeting at American Fork Hospital which she attended in his stead. Michael Wren, his former chief of staff, said he attended a groundbreaking ceremony at the Jordanelle Dam that Olsen included in his expense reports, though he did not see Olsen there.

Grunander said Olsen's actions at times indicated that he knew he was misappropriating funds. The allegedly fraudulent reimbursement requests were often packaged with several legitimate expense reports, he said. And the only time he showed an intent to reimburse the city for one of the allegedly fraudulent reimbursement requests, Grunander said, was the day after an investigator from the Utah County Attorney's Office spoke to the mayor about the expense reports.

"He was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, and that's when he paid the city back," Grunander said.

Yengich also asked that the seven counts of misusing public money be consolidated into one, a request that Mortensen denied. Yengich argued that the charges should be consolidated because the series of alleged fraudulent transactions would indicate a single intent by Olsen. Mortensen agreed with Grunander that each of the seven alleged incidents constituted an individual crime.

Misuse of public money is a third-degree felony that carries a penalty of zero to five years in prison.