Inside a state office building in downtown Albany, Edmund J. McMahon argued in favor of 401(k)-style pensions for New York’s government workers.
Outside on that early February morning, union members wave signs emblazoned: “EJ McMahon = agent of the 1%, wants to gamble your retirement security on Wall Street.”
Just another Thursday on the job for E.J. McMahon, the standard-bearer for a fiscally conservative approach to how New York state spends, taxes, borrows money, incentivizes private-sector growth, bargains labor contracts and structures benefits for state workers.
McMahon founded the Empire Center for Public Policy in 2005. The think-tank is in Albany, capital of a state that is the most unionized in the nation, shaded blue on the electoral map.
But the positions McMahon advocates appear to resonate more in the present political and economic climate. Cutting the national deficit is among the hot topics in this election season. At the state level, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed a law to limit increases in property taxes, started to curtail spending and labeled his fiscal policies as those of a “progressive Democrat who’s broke.”….
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