In the Fayette County race for coroner, it’s time for a change

The Fayette County Coroner’s position is one of those somewhat strange and hybrid positions that is extremely important to the community, but has no real accountability to anyone but the voters (It’s also for some reason a partisan race.)

While well-trained and very experienced, incumbent Democrat Gary Ginn has coasted for many years in this position with numerous blips and controversies along the way. The most recent, the botched death announcement of a Lexington teen to his family, was the final step. We believe it’s time for a change and we endorse Ginn’s opponent, Republican Larry Owens.

In 2015, Ginn made headlines at his second full-time job running the University of Kentucky’s body bequeathal program. Ginn had allowed a backlog of donated bodies and cremated remains to build up at UK without burial. He blamed budget problems, although UK officials denied that was a problem. After an audit, the program was discontinued and Ginn lost his job.

He’s had two sets of accusations of alleged sexual harassment in the workplace. In 2018, he was investigated by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission and was later sued by a former deputy coroner, who claimed Ginn made inappropriate remarks and actions in the office. A judge later found a lack of evidence for the lawsuit.

Then last year, a teenage boy named Nathan Burnett was killed in a skiing accident in Utah. A deputy coroner told the parents to call a number in Utah, but offered no information about what happened or if he had even died. This incident led to Nathan’s Law, which requires coroners and deputy coroners to go through grief training to receive their monthly compensation.

Owens has experience as a deputy coroner in Fayette, Jessamine and Woodford counties. He said one of his first jobs would be to make sure family notification is improved in Fayette County. He also wants to see the coroner’s office taking more action in the recent crime wave, perhaps by getting students interested in STEM more involved with his office. While we’d like to see more energy from Owens than we saw in our interview, we like his ideas.

This will be the third time that Owens has challenged Ginn, whose broad name recognition has propelled him to victory two previous times. Ginn has been efficient in dealing with Lexington’s burgeoning homicide rate, but he carries too much baggage to continue in the same job he has held since 2003.

We endorse Larry Owens for the job.

This story was originally published October 19, 2022 at 9:36 AM.