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Zach Patton

Executive Editor

Zach Patton -- Executive Editor. Zach joined GOVERNING as a staff writer in 2004. He received the 2011 Jesse H. Neal Award for Outstanding Journalism for his GOVERNING story on economic cutbacks in Colorado Springs. He has served as an editor since 2010, and as Executive Editor since 2012.

Since the late 1980s, cities have bought heavily into the "broken windows" theory: the notion that an unkempt, disorderly environment breeds crime. Leaders ...
Moral issues aside (which of course is a pretty tall order), people seem to agree on one thing about legalizing gay marriages: it's good for the economy.
Here's an interesting -- and beautiful -- way to look at immigration patterns. Using data from the Department of Homeland Security, a grad student ...
  From the Of-Course!-Why-Haven't-We-Thought-About-This-Before? Department: A company in the Netherlands has installed what it calls the world's first device that uses the motion ...
We've all been hearing an awful lot lately about newspapers facing bankruptcy and cutting the size of their staffs. (As Jon Stewart put it ...
We wrote last year about New York City's plan to spruce up its marriage bureau in an effort to attract more matrimony-minded couples (and ...
"Saturday Night Live" alum Amy Poehler has hit federal government (with her hilarious take on Hillary Clinton) and state government (with her instant-classic ...
Washington, DC, is settling back to normal after the unprecedented crowd that descended on the city over the weekend for the inauguration. Many of the ...
This week, GOVERNING is hosting our annual Outlook in the States and Localities conference here in Washington.  As usual, we'll be taking an in-depth ...
GOVERNING kicked off its Outlook in the States and Localities conference this afternoon with a panel on the economic challenges that cities and ocunties are ...