Erie County, Pennsylvania
Unfiltered Erie

Budgets. Elections. Housing. Development. We dig into the issues that shape Erie County. All sourced. All in plain English.

Watch the Videos Election Data
$576M
Erie County Budget
$110M
City of Erie Budget
267K
County Residents
$52.4M
Federal ARPA Funds
Executive Briefing · May 2026
The $318 Million Question

Erie's pension recovery created a structural surplus. Home rule is the mechanism to redirect close to $400 million to the general fund — without raising property taxes.

Read the Briefing (PDF) Watch the Video
$318M
8-Page Briefing
No Property Tax Increase

2026 Primary Mail Ballot Tracker

Daily updated data on every mail ballot application in Erie County.

View Tracker →
Executive Briefing · 8 Pages
The $318 Million Question — How Home Rule Unlocks Erie's Pension Surplus
Real actuarial data. PFM's own numbers. No property tax increase.
Download PDF →
An Unfiltered Erie Report · AI Simulation

What an Erie reassessment would look like — simulated by AI on public data.

Erie County hasn’t reassessed since 2013. We trained an AI model on every public deed transfer in Erie and used it to simulate what an updated set of bills would look like today — every parcel, every neighborhood, every school district. The total tax collected stays constant by Pennsylvania law; the bills move between homes.

77,370
homes priced
individually
14,691
verified sales
used to train
±15%
per-home accuracy
vs recent sales
38
municipalities
full coverage
Open the simulation → Read the full report
Watch
Reports, analysis, and coverage.
YouTube Channel →
Coming Soon
Every vote. Every decision. Explained.
We're building plain English summaries of every council meeting so you don't have to sit through three hours to find out what happened.
🏛️
Erie County Council
Meeting summaries coming soon.
🏛️
Erie City Council
Meeting summaries coming soon.
Erie by the Numbers
The data behind the stories.
Updated as new information becomes available from public records.

Population

267,000

Erie County population. The city of Erie is about 95,000. The county has lost population in every census since 1970.

County Budget

$576M

2024 Erie County budget. Includes general fund, special revenue, enterprise funds. No tax increase in the 2026 proposal.

ARPA Funds

$52.4M

Federal COVID relief dollars allocated to Erie County. Where did it all go? That is the question we keep asking.

Voter Registration

174,856

Registered voters in Erie County. Democrats hold a registration advantage, but the gap has been narrowing since 2016.

Voter Turnout Gap

72% vs 28%

Presidential election turnout vs municipal election turnout. The people who affect your daily life the most are elected by the fewest voters.

Mail Ballot Requests

16,332

Applications for the 2026 primary so far. 15,146 approved. Democrats outnumber Republicans 3.27 to 1 in mail ballot requests.

About
I'm not a journalist. I'm a guy from Erie who believes an informed community makes better decisions.

Unfiltered Erie started because the information we need to understand our own city was either buried in PDFs, announced with no context, or just never explained to the public at all.

So I started digging. Budgets, policy decisions, election data, housing trends, state funding impacts. I pull the actual documents and break them down so any resident can understand them in 10 minutes.

This isn't about gotcha moments or taking sides. It's about an informed Erie leading itself forward.

TL
Tom Laird
Erie native. 30 years in business.
Just trying to educate and lead.
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An informed Erie
is a stronger Erie.

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Topics We Cover
If it affects Erie, we're looking at it.
City of Erie Budget Erie County Budget ARPA Spending Property Taxes Nonprofit Tax Exemptions PILOT Payments Erie County Council Erie City Council Home Rule Charter Welcoming City Ordinance Housing Market Voter Registration Election Data Mail Ballot Tracking Zoning Reform Public Safety Hotel Tax Economic Development Population & Demographics School Funding Pleasant Ridge Manor Gaming Revenue Erie Water Authority ICE Detainers