What this site is, and how far to trust it

A site built from public records

Most of what you read here was first published by someone else: bills, roll calls and House Legislative Journals from the Pennsylvania General Assembly; opinions posted by the Unified Judicial System; General Fund tracking from the Pennsylvania Office of the Budget; campaign finance filings from the Department of State; legislative data by way of Open States; biographical details from Wikipedia and Wikidata, labelled as such; and television clips from their own channels.

The site links records to where they came from wherever it can. Those sources remain the authority. Where this site and a source disagree, rely on the source, and please tell us.

Information may not be accurate

Sources make mistakes, change their records and go out of date, and collecting from them adds its own errors: a name matched to the wrong person, a bill matched to the wrong session, a page that changed after it was read. Coverage is uneven, and some years and records are not yet included. Nothing here should be treated as complete, current to the minute, or free of error.

Language models, and where they are not used

Television diagrams are drawn by fixed rules from each clip’s title, description and stored captions. No language model writes a clip’s opinion. Captions are made by machine and can mishear names and numbers.

A few features can show text from a language model, and say so where they appear: a reading of how precisely a bill is drafted, where one is stored, and answers in Ask the record. Treat these as an interpretation to be checked against the passages they cite, not as fact. Where no reading is stored, the page leaves it blank.

Scores and measures

The lobbyist score is a count of Department of State expense reports that wrote a bill number in the subject line. The purpose is that line, including any position the filer put in parentheses. The outcome is the bill’s stored result. The count is not a finding that other bills were never lobbied, and a quarterly total is the whole report, not spending on one bill. House Legislative Journals are stored as published and are not scored. Departments carry no effectiveness score; the General Fund figures are the Office of the Budget’s own tracking runs, shown in dollars after the page converts the thousands the Office publishes. Where a topic position for a member or writer appears, it is a stored reading of their words, not a statement of their views, and it is left blank when the stored record does not support one.

Estimates

Court opinions are listed as the appellate courts posted them. They are not yet matched to the statutes they discuss, so the site makes no estimate of what litigation over a law has cost. Polls, where shown, are as compiled on Wikipedia.

Commentary

Television clips are commentary by their own hosts and guests; their inclusion is not endorsement. The November 3, 2026 election for governor has not been decided, and nothing here predicts its result.

Independence and use

This is an independent civic project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the General Assembly, the Commonwealth, any court, any political party or any news organization. Names and quotations belong to their owners and appear for reporting and commentary. Nothing on the site is legal, financial or professional advice.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, please say so. Send a correction with a link to the source that shows it, and it will be checked and fixed.