E.J. McMahon

Founding Senior Fellow

Edmund J. McMahon was the Empire Center’s founding senior fellow.

McMahon’s writing and research has focused on improving New York’s economic competitiveness and promoting greater transparency, accountability and fiscal responsibility in state and local government. He has authored or co-authored major studies on public pension reform, collective bargaining, population migration, budget trends and tax policy in New York. His influential “Blueprint for a Better Budget,” published in January 2010, featured a number of recommendations subsequently implemented under Governors David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo. McMahon also was a leading advocate of an across-the-board cap on property taxes in New York before it was enacted at Governor Cuomo’s initiative in 2011.

McMahon has published numerous articles and essays in publications including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Barron’s, the Public Interest, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, Newsday and the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. His frequent radio and TV interviews have included appearances on CNBC, Fox News Channel and Bloomberg News, as well as on regional cable and broadcast outlets throughout New York State.

McMahon’s professional background includes nearly 30 years as an Albany-based analyst and close observer of New York State government. As chief fiscal advisor to the Assembly Republican Conference in the early 1990s, he drafted a personal income tax reform plan that would become the basis for historic tax cuts enacted under Governor George E. Pataki. Previously, as research director of the Public Policy Institute, he worked on the Institute’s counter-budget proposals and developed the template for New York’s school report cards. He also served as a deputy commissioner in the state Department of Taxation and Finance and as a vice chancellor of the State University of New York.

McMahon is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, which he joined in June 2000. In January 2005, he opened the Institute’s Albany-based Empire Center project, which became an independent nonprofit think tank in 2013. He was the Empire Center’s founding president and became research director in the fall of 2016.

Earlier in his career, he was a staff writer and columnist for the Albany Times Union and The Knickerbocker News.

McMahon is a graduate of Villanova University.

Latest Work

Relying on the Rich

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Sun
  • February 11, 2003
  • Commentary

Labor unions and their allies in New York's burgeoning health and social services sector are demanding new taxes on the wealthy to help close the state's $12 billion budget gap. After all, the argument goes, it's only fair to ask those who gained the most from the economic boom to bail the rest of us out of this bust. Read More

With Pals Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Newsday
  • March 12, 2003
  • Commentary

Long Island's State Senate and Assembly members are patting themselves on the back for having blocked a revival of the commuter tax. But they also have provided the pivotal bloc of legislative support for a big state income tax hike that will transfer more of the Island's wealth to places like Binghamton and Buffalo. Read More

Silver’s Risky Budget Game

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • March 19, 2003
  • Commentary

Gov. George E. Pataki set just the right tone for this year's New York state budget battle when he opened the legislative session in January with a plea to avoid "job killing" tax increases. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver replied: "On the subject of taxes, let me be very clear, the Assembly is not advocating tax hikes." Read More

Doomsday for Real

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • April 16, 2003
  • Commentary

Mayor Bloomberg's $1 billion "doomsday" budget- cutting plan is widely perceived as a scare tactic designed to force concessions out of Gov. Pataki and the Legislature: Once Bloomberg gets what he needs out of Albany, the contingency plan goes back into a locked drawer in the basement of City Hall. Read More

Erasing Giuliani’s Tax Progress

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Sun
  • April 22, 2003
  • Commentary

Mayor Bloomberg's "draconian" service-cutting contingency plan dominated the headlines when he unveiled his fiscal 2004 city budget proposal last week. But the real news is that the budget has brought the city a big step closer to another massive tax hike, posing a grave new threat to New York's still-shrinking economy. Read More

Taxing ‘Til We Drop

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • May 5, 2003
  • Commentary

By any standard, the revenue bill passed by the state Legislature last week was a real blockbuster - raising taxes on a scale that would dwarf anything enacted during the rolling fiscal crisis that punctuated Gov. Mario Cuomo's tenure. Read More

Taxing the Grandkids

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • May 7, 2003
  • Commentary

The state Legislature's latest aid package didn't really do New York City many favors. Sure, Mayor Bloomberg got most of the state funding he was looking for--but some of that money is likely to vaporize next year, when the state will almost certainly be broke again. Read More

Gouging the Metro Area

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • May 16, 2003
  • Commentary

In an era of steeply progressive taxation, New York state's formulas for aid to local governments inevitably have a Robin Hood effect - redistributing income from the relatively wealthy New York City metropolitan area to relatively poorer regions north of the Bear Mountain Bridge. Read More