biographical statement

Carole A. Rubley served the residents of the 157th District, Chester and Montgomery Counties, as a Republican in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1993-2008. Born in Bethel, CN on January 18, 1939, Ms. Rubley was educated at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, CT, earning a BA in Biology, and at West Chester University (Pennsylvania), earning at MS in Environmental Health.

Prior to running for State Representative, Ms. Rubley taught high school biology from 1960-1962 and worked as a real estate agent at Henderson Dewey from 1977-1981. From 1981-1988, Ms. Rubley served as the Solid Waste Coordinator for the Chester County Health Department. She also served as the Supervisor for Tredyffrin Township from 1987-1992 and as a Project Manager fro Environmental Resources Management, Inc. from 1988-1992.

According to her Oral History Interview, conducted on October 27, 2008, while working at a local level, Ms. Rubley “found that [she] was getting more and more frustrated because bills were being passed at the state level that had a great impact on … the local level, and yet [they] were never part of the process. [They] were never given the opportunity to comment on some of these proposed bills, and suddenly there they were law, and [they] had to try to abide by them, and in some cases they had a negative impact on our municipalities” (Oral History Interview, page 4). She ran for the position of state representative out of frustration.

During her tenure as representative, Ms. Rubley was assigned to the Aging and Youth Committee, the Children and Youth Committee, the Conservation Committee, the Consumer Affairs Committee, the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee (Chair of the Subcommittee on parks and Forests), the Finance Committee, the Liquor Control Committee, and the Republican Policy Committee. She was also an organizer of the Jefferson Reform Initiative, a movement to reform the way business was conducted in Harrisburg, especially following the fallout of the 2005 Pay Raise, for which Ms. Rubley did not vote for or accept and voted to repeal.

Legislatively, Ms. Rubley had fourteen bills signed into law during her term of service, probably, according to her Oral History Interview, because of her good relationships with Democrats as well as the Senate. While her legislative efforts spanned the concerns of the Commonwealth, Ms. Rubley’s interests focused upon the environment and conservation, tax-related issues, promoting vocational and technical education, and recycling issues. Ms. Rubley served on the Governor’s 21st Century Environment Commission, the report for which is included in her collection. Her greatest challenge while serving as a representative was the slow process of the actual legislating, stating, “I didn’t expect that it would take so long, so many years, to get bills through,” (Oral History Interview, page 24).

In 2008, Ms. Rubley decided not to run for re-election in order to spend more time with her husband, family and eight grandchildren. Further, she looked forward to the freedom of schedule stating, “you work around the Session schedule, but you’re always missing something in your district, and you’re feeling guilty… And I also want the time to focus on issues that I think are really critical to us, rather than trying to deal with hundreds of issues,” (Oral History Interview, page 25).

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