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

Spending Still Rising In State Budget

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • January 18, 2005
  • Blog

State funds spending would rise at twice the inflation rate under Governor Pataki's proposed 2005-06 Executive Budget. And despite much-ballyhooed "cuts," state-funded Medicaid costs next year would increase nearly 13 percent. Read More

“Excelsior” or Bust?

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • March 7, 2005
  • Blog

New York State spending has increased faster during the four fiscal years since the latest economic downturn began in 2001 than during a comparable recession and recovery period in the early 1990s. Read More

Legislators Still Aim to Sweeten Public Pensions

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • July 15, 2005
  • Blog

The employer share of pension contributions in New York has risen by more than $3 billion in the last five years, straining taxpayers throughout the state. Yet state legislators this year have passed dozens of bills—and introduced literally hundreds of others—that would further expand the already generous retirement benefits of government workers. Read More

FINAL PATAKI BUDGET: SPEND NOW, CUT TAXES LATER

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • March 23, 2006
  • Blog

With school property taxes continuing to rise across New York State, Albany's leading Republicans are pushing for a major expansion of the STAR (School Tax Relief) program in the next state budget. But more STAR spending will do nothing to reduce New York's oppressive state and local tax burden. Instead, it will promote faster growth in school spending and property tax levies unless it is tied to a firm cap on school district budgets or taxes. Read More

More STAR in New York’s Future?

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • March 23, 2006
  • Blog

With school property taxes continuing to rise across New York State, Albany's leading Republicans are pushing for a major expansion of the STAR (School Tax Relief) program in the next state budget. But more STAR spending will do nothing to reduce New York's oppressive state and local tax burden. Instead, it will promote faster growth in school spending and property tax levies unless it is tied to a firm cap on school district budgets or taxes. Read More

New Budget Spends at Rockefeller-Era Pace

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • May 17, 2006
  • Blog

New York's newly enacted budget calls for the biggest state spending increase in 33 years ­ without even including legislative additions blocked on constitutional grounds by Governor George Pataki. Read More

Pension Watch ’06: The Sweetening Continues

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • July 13, 2006
  • Blog

Seemingly oblivious to the already high and rising cost of taxpayer-funded public pensions in New York, state lawmakers this year passed at least 36 measures that would expand pension benefits for groups of public workers. Read More

Spitzer’s Big Spending Plan

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • February 2, 2007
  • Blog

Governor Spitzer's first Executive Budget would raise state spending by up to three times the projected rate of inflation in the fiscal year that begins April 1. Read More