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

Mike’s Budget Battle

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • June 17, 2011
  • Commentary

With less than two weeks to go before the start of New York City’s 2012 fiscal year, Mayor Bloomberg insists he must eliminate 6,100 teaching positions and close 20 fire companies to balance the next city budget. Read More

Stabbed in the Back

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • June 25, 2011
  • Commentary

A bid to gut Cuomo’s tax cap The passage of a 2 percent cap on local property-tax growth in New York should have been the crowning achievement of Gov. Cuomo’s first legislative session -- complementing an austere budget to set a more fiscally responsible tone for the Empire State. Read More

NY’s Unaffordable Pension System

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Newsday
  • July 26, 2011
  • Commentary

New York has always paid its pension bills on time," state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said recently. We've heard that boast from the comptroller before. Unfortunately, that's only technically true. Under a 2010 budget provision championed by DiNapoli himself, the state is now delaying payment of significant portions of its pension bills. Read More

Empire State’s Half-Century Exodus

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • August 2, 2011
  • Reports

New York lost a net 1.6 million residents to other states between 2000 and 2010, according to 2010 Census data. The domestic migration outflow, coupled with a slowdown in foreign immigration, ensured that New York’s share of the nation’s population continued to slide in the first decade of the 21st century. Read More

Out of The Tunnel?

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • August 16, 2011
  • Commentary

The cover of New York state's latest budget update features a photo taken from within a Central Park tunnel, looking out toward a path curving up a gentle incline through a verdant landscape. Read More

Why the PA should sell off the WTC

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Post
  • August 22, 2011
  • Commentary

The Port Authority toll-hike outrage is a signal to Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie, who control the agency for New York and New Jersey: The Downtown reconstruction project is consuming tolls that should go to bridge and tunnel work, not to real estate. Read More

Outward Bound New Yorkers

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • September 26, 2011
  • Reports

As the exodus of taxpayers from the Empire State continued during the past decade, which other states gained the most at New York’s expense? And how were migration patterns affected by changing economic conditions? Read More