County Board Reappoints Man Who Died in 2012

Officials in western Pennsylvania are trying to figure out how a man who's been dead for more than two years wound up being reappointed to a county industrial authority board. Fayette County officials said yesterday it seemed they never tried checking in with Larry Markwood before reappointing him. He died in August 2012. County commissioners say they conducted interviews with candidates and received letters from members who want to be reappointed or leave the board, but Markwood slipped through the cracks.

The industrial authority hadn't met since 2010, so attendance records would have been of no use. Commissioner chairman Vincent Zapotosky tells the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review they'll be smarter about the reappointment process in the future. Still, "you would think, after a while, with a decedent, we would have gotten some information,” he says. (More strange stuff stories.)