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

Tax and Spend Legacy

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • July 28, 2006
  • Commentary

In Mario Cuomo's last year as governor, New Yorkers' combined state and local tax burden was 13.7 percent of their income—fully 3.2 percentage points above the national average, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. As of 2005, the Tax Foundation estimates, the Empire State's combined tax burden is down to 12 percent—1.9 percentage points above the national average. Read More

Fiscal Time Bomb

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Sun
  • August 10, 2006
  • Commentary

New York’s state and local governments provide their retired employees with continuing health insurance coverage on the same basis as active workers, at benefit levels far more generous than those available to taxpayers employed in the private sector. Read More

Public Pension Price Tag

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Wall Street Journal
  • August 21, 2006
  • Commentary

The recent enactment of sweeping changes in federal laws governing private pension plans, the issuance of a scathing auditors' report on the collapse of San Diego's pension fund, and the disclosure of potential shortfalls in New York City's pension funds all point to what should be the nation's next big target for financial reform. Read More

Public Jobs Remain Plentiful

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Syracuse Post-Standard
  • September 5, 2006
  • Commentary

From the perspective of Labor Day 2006, employment and wage trends in New York since the beginning of this decade could be described as a tale of two sectors: private and public. Read More

Medicaid Misses

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • September 19, 2006
  • Commentary

With the election of New York's governor just seven weeks away, Democrat Eliot Spitzer and Republican John Faso have released plans to reform Medicaid and rein in its soaring costs. But given their timid suggestions, New Yorkers should hardly expect any significant drop in Medicaid's skyrocketing budget or savings from lower property taxes. Read More

Two Years Later, Much is Undone

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Syracuse Post-Standard
  • October 17, 2006
  • Commentary

Two years ago, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School made headlines with a report thoroughly documenting the "dysfunction" of New York's state Legislature. While the Brennan Center is decidedly left-of-center on many public policy issues, its dissection of Albany's legislative process reached conclusions that cut across ideological and partisan lines. Read More