Zach Patton

Recent Articles

• Election Coverage on Ballot Box
• Nov 3, 2008
• Be sure to read Governing's Ballot Box blog this week for all your state and local elections news. Governing staff writers Josh Goodman and ...

• When Everyone's an Outlaw
• Oct 29, 2008
• Thousands of residents in Houston -- including the mayor! -- are in flagrant violation of a city law. So....the city's doing away with ...
• 4 Comments

• Chicanery in Virginia
• Oct 28, 2008
• A phony flier being distributed in Virginia tells voters that Democrats and Republicans should vote on different days. "Due to the larger than expected ...

• For Want of a Pyramid Scheme
• Oct 28, 2008
• The Memphis Pyramid is quite possibly the biggest municipal white elephant in the U.S. today. Built in 1991 for $68 million, the huge arena was never ...

• Scranton's Last Laugh?
• Oct 23, 2008
• Scranton, Pennsylvania, is one of those much-maligned towns that's attained almost a mythical status as a rough, hardscrabble, blue-collar place nobody wants to live. It's ...

• Forget Joe the Plumber -- Let's Talk About Michelle Rhee
• Oct 16, 2008
• In this year's presidential and VP debates, there hasn't been all that much talk about local policy. But last night's debate between Barack Obama and ...

• The Town That Was Saved by Food (?)
• Oct 10, 2008
• Earlier this year, I wrote about how the local-food movement is being viewed in some places as an economic development opportunity. I profiled Woodbury County, ...

• Wait'll the Jogging Lobby Hears About This
• Oct 7, 2008
• Hey, you!  How did you get to your desk this morning?  Your own two feet?  Well, congratulations! You just participated in the ...

• Bill Bratton's Reading List
• Oct 3, 2008
• Here in Austin for the Managing Performance conference, LAPD chief Bill Bratton made some amazing points about his efforts to apply a data-driven mindset to ...
• 1 Comments

• Bratton's Brass Tacks
• Oct 3, 2008
• I mentioned LAPD chief Bill Bratton's successes at reducing crime in New York City in the 1990s and Los Angeles today. His success in New ...

• Bratton: "Measure What Matters"
• Oct 3, 2008
• Being at a state and local government convention in the midst of a huge federal election season is kind of funny. For one thing, as ...

• Preparing for the Worst
• Oct 2, 2008
• The theme of this year's Managing Performance conference is "Performance Under Pressure." There's probably no city government more equipped to talk about that topic right now than Minneapolis.

• Rybak: Partner-Citizens and the "Seventh Generation"
• Oct 2, 2008
• As I mentioned earlier, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak spoke this morning at Governing's Managing Performance conference in Austin. He had a lot of very ...

• 'Minneapolis Responds'
• Oct 2, 2008
• We just heard from a panel of Minneapolis public officials, including Mayor R.T. Rybak, about that city's incredibly well orchestrated response to last summer's ...

• A Texas-Sized Welcome
• Oct 1, 2008
• The 2008 Managing Performance conference kicked off in Austin this evening with a welcome from Texas Comptroller Susan Combs. She gave the conferees her take on ...