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

Rating Mayor Mike

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • City Journal
  • July 1, 2005
  • Commentary

With the ashes of September 11 still smoldering, Michael Bloomberg won his first New York mayoral term largely because city voters assumed that he would stick with Rudolph Giuliani’s most successful policies. Read More

Bill’s Cost Could Be Impossible to Count

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Syracuse Post-Standard
  • July 26, 2005
  • Commentary

Amid the hundreds of arcane laws enacted every year in Albany, how's a taxpayer to know which ones actually represent a huge favor to a powerful special interest group - with huge cost implications for the rest of us? Read More

The City’s Governor

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • The New York Times
  • August 7, 2005
  • Commentary

When George E. Pataki first became governor in 1994, he made much of his humble origins on a farm in a small Hudson River community. And based on the vote totals, a large majority of New York City residents apparently dismissed him as a country bumpkin—or, at best, a suburban arriviste. Read More

Property Tax Plan Has Hidden Hefty Bite

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Syracuse Post-Standard
  • August 23, 2005
  • Commentary

Property taxes are unpopular with homeowners from coast to coast - and nowhere more so than in NewYork state, which is home to some of the highest property taxes in the nation. Relative to property values and incomes, the property tax burden might be heaviest of all in Central New York and other Upstate regions. Read More

Gas Pains

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • September 6, 2006
  • Commentary

Natural disasters and economic crises can often bring out the best in people. But they also have a way of bringing out the worst in politicians as typified by the way some New York state legislators have reacted to the latest series of increases gasoline prices. Read More

Voters Have Say on Future Spending

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Syracuse Post-Standard
  • October 4, 2005
  • Commentary

Unlike residents of 29 other states, New Yorkers don't have the opportunity to end-run their politicians through a statewide voter initiative or referendum process. As a result, we've never been able to mount the kind of up-from-the-grassroots taxpayer revolt that's shaken some other state governments to their foundations. Read More

Breaking the Budget in New York State

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • October 19, 2005
  • Reports

After failing to adopt a budget on time for 20 of the last 21 years, New York State legislative leaders are seeking voter approval of a constitutional amendment that they insist on characterizing as “budget reform.” Budget de-form would be more like it. Read More

Measure Isn’t The Reform it Poses As

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Syracuse Post-Standard
  • November 1, 2005
  • Commentary

As more of the facts emerge about Proposal One on the Nov. 8 statewide ballot, New Yorkers are discovering that this attempt by Albany insiders to protect lawmakers' paychecks and rewrite the state constitution is hardly the "reform" its supporters have made it out to be. Read More

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