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

Gold-Plated Pensions

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • October 8, 2008
  • Commentary

New York's deepening fiscal crisis should refocus public attention on the need to reform the city's unsustainably costly package of generous retirement benefits for municipal workers. Read More

Income-Tax Idiocy

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • October 20, 2008
  • Commentary

New York City government has barely begun to bring its spending into line with post-meltdown reality—and Council Speaker Christine Quinn is already saying "we'll need to look at personal income-tax changes," among "other ideas," for closing budget gaps that are likely to swell beyond $8 billion over the next two years. Read More

Gov’s Brave Talk

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • November 13, 2008
  • Commentary

The most noteworthy aspect of Gov. Pater son's news conference yesterday wasn't the detailed breakdown of his $2 billion in proposed changes to close a projected shortfall in the current state budget. Read More

EJ McMahon Testimony: Assembly Committee on Real Property Taxation

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • December 10, 2008
  • Testimony

Economic conditions have obvious implications for the work of this Committee and for the Legislature in general. We are in the midst of a potentially severe and long-lasting global recession. But for New York State, the recession is only part of the problem. Fueled by the super-heated profits of the securities industry, mixed with gains from a now-popped real estate bubble, the surge in state tax revenues over the past five years was as big as anything New York has experienced during any previous five-year stretch in the last 35 years. Read More

Albany Needs a Whole Lot More Sunshine

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Newsday
  • January 16, 2009
  • Commentary

New York's huge budget deficit—$15.4 billion in the next 15 months—will force difficult choices in terms of government services and tax policies for years to come. To engage intelligently in that debate, New Yorkers need far more information than we now receive from Albany. Read More

Dems Have a Taxing Plan

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Daily News
  • January 23, 2009
  • Commentary

Now that they control both houses of the New York State Legislature, Democrats in Albany are reportedly preparing to raise the state income tax on high-income New Yorkers to help plug a $15 billion budget gap. Read More

Stimulus’ Slaps NY Taxpayers

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • January 27, 2009
  • Commentary

THE House of Representatives this week is expected to pass a federal stimulus package that could pump at least $17 billion of noncapital funding directly into New York's state and local government coffers over the next two years. Read More