Jay Ledbetter J.D. stands for:
Limited government
Lower taxes
Integrity, transparency and public accountability
Conservative, fiscal responsibility
Rule of law
Highest legal and medical ethics
Restoring “service” to public service
Supplying the vital missing piece… 35+ years of business, legal, investigative, and courtroom expertise
The Correct Vision
I’ll restore ethics, transparency, public accountability and fiscal responsibility. I will run the office like a business, restoring focus on the bottom line of cheerful service to the public, at a reduced cost.
The Correct Qualifications
The Coroner’s office performs legal, investigative, and medical functions. Only 8 of 64 Coroners in Colorado are Pathologists. 18 Colorado Pathologists are on-call to do our autopsies. But the office is already well staffed with doctors, autopsy assistants, investigators, and office managers. Our Coroner must be a functioning manager, just like our Sheriff (doesn’t patrol the streets), and our Clerk and Recorder (doesn’t hand out license plates). I’ve litigated everything from traffic tickets to murder cases, and conducted or supervised thousands of legal and medical investigations. I have Coroner-specific training in death scene investigations. I supply the missing ingredient of 35+ years of business management, investigation and legal expertise.
A Businessman, Not a Career Politician
I’m no politician. Working since age 15, I’ve spent my life in the work force, both in running small and large businesses (some on an international scale), and as a military leader. I’ll apply real-world business management to government.
A Demonstrated Military Leader
After JAGC school, I attended Infantry, Paratrooper, and SF training. Assignments included Special Forces, Infantry, Logistics and Joint Commands. I was Deputy Chief of Ground Operations for Special Operations Command, Joint Forces Command. Several overseas deployments include Desert Storm.
Bipartisan Support
Rep. Debbie Stafford, an expert in funeral home industry, is only one of the Democrats joining prominent Republican endorsing me.
The LEDBETTER PLAN includes:
Slashing the Coroner’s obscene salary.
Let’s get his hands out of our pockets. I'll refuse his salary package (approximately $260,000), and accept the statutory salary of $87,300.
Restoring diverted funds.
Arapahoe County should be paid for autopsies done for other counties, not the Coroner’s staff doctors. One prominent County official describes the office as the incumbent’s “personal money machine”. He uses County facilities and staff to divert approximately $75,000 annually into his own pocket. He sold that idea to the Commissioners, but the voters aren’t buying it. The incumbent wants us to believe that he is the “gold standard” for the office. The current “standard” is “the Coroner gets all the gold”. Enough, already.
Stopping wasteful spending.
The non-manager incumbent knows how to do only one thing, so he focuses on that one thing - autopsies (performing SIX TIMES the national average). Is a $1.5 million annual budget right for a staff of only 12 persons?
Ending “double dipping”.
Staff doctors leave for weeks at a time (on FEMA payroll), remaining on the County payroll, but neglecting their work here. It’s wrong for taxpayers to pay even more money to hire other Pathologists to do their work, while they’re absent.
Extending business hours to allow reasonable public access.
Currently, the Coroner’s office is only open 9-5, and closed over lunch and weekends. That’s unreasonable. The Driver’s License office does better than that. When I’m elected, the phones will be answered any time of day, even on weekends. I will run the office with a focus on the people we are elected to serve, NOT for the convenience of the Coroner and his staff.
