iphone 4 led light stays on-won't turn off

Basic troubleshooting steps oultlined in the User Guide are restart, reset, restore from backup, restore as new device.

You need to go through all steps in succession until your problem is solved.  If going through ALL these steps fails to resolve your issue, then you'll need to bring your phone into Apple for evaluation and possible replacement.

resetas in hold down the home key and the power switch at the same time?  restore from backup via iTunes?  then restore as new device via iTunes?  i assume "yest" to all, but am double checking.  in all of this, I'm also getting a "itunes was unable to load provider data from sync services ...." error.  love it.

yes

Mine is staying on as well.  I tried everything listed above to no avail. As a last resort I replaced the camera.  My heart dropped when I plugged in the new camera and the light pop back on.  My last last resort is going to be a small piece of electrical tape. 

I fixed it by inserting a small piece of paper under the large section of contact under the LED of the camera.  Light no longer stays on, and the flash works as expected.