YACHATS – A Yachats woman indicted on three felony charges for violating Oregon election law in 2019 when she was elected to the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District board is scheduled to enter a plea and be sentenced May 12 in Lincoln County Circuit Court.
A’lyce A. Ruberg, 53, of Yachats was indicted by a Lincoln County grand jury in December and arraigned Monday by presiding Judge Sheryl Bachart.
The indictments are the result of complaints filed with the Oregon Elections Division by at least four Yachats-area residents following stories in YachatsNews in September 2019. The complaints came after a YachatsNews investigation showed that Ruberg lied about her occupation, occupation history and education in the May 2019 Lincoln County voters pamphlet.
A Lincoln County grand jury issued a secret indictment Dec. 9, 2021 after hearing testimony from Jose Salas, a special agent with the Oregon Department of Justice.
In Oregon it is a Class C felony to make a false statement in required portions of a state or county voters’ pamphlet. Conviction is punishable by a maximum of five years in prison, a fine of as much as $125,000, or both. But it is rare that elections law violations would draw anything near that type of sentence.
Ruberg won a three-way race for the Yachats fire board in May 2019, took office in July and attended just three of nine meetings before resigning in November after the voters pamphlet lies were uncovered. The fire board had no authority to compel her to resign.
Ruberg was the only board candidate to pay for space in the voter’s pamphlet – where she listed her occupation as a registered nurse, listed an advanced degree in nursing and that she had worked for at least two fire agencies in California.
None of those were true, YachatsNews reported, eventually triggering investigations by the Elections Division and a separate one by the Oregon State Board of Nursing.
The nursing board turned down Ruberg’s application for a nursing license in July 2017 for a host of reasons, including not informing it of her criminal history in California, that she had lied in previous hospital job applications, and had given the agency emergency medical technician license numbers belonging to other people.
After investigating the voter’s pamphlet statement in 2019, the nursing board voted unanimously to fine Ruberg $5,000 for falsely stating that she was a nurse. Oregon law prohibits anyone from practicing nursing or indicating they are a nurse without a state-approved license. Ruberg requested a hearing on that fine – which two years later has still yet to be scheduled.
