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

More on those rising pension costs

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • August 25, 2011
  • Blog

New York's cities, already the most fiscally stressed class of local governments in the state, will be hit especially hard by the next wave of pension contribution increases yesterday by the state comptroller. That's because city payrolls tend to be Read More

Pensions go “boom” (again)

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • August 24, 2011
  • Blog

Tax-funded employer contributions to the New York State and Local Retirement System will rise sharply in fiscal year 2013, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli today. The rate billed for members of the Employer Retirement System (ERS) will rise to near Read More

Gotham’s mythical school budget “cuts”

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • August 24, 2011
  • Blog

Reporting today on New York City's plan to lay off 780 school employees in October, an in The New York Times explains: "The layoffs are a direct consequence of budget cuts to schools, which have occurred in each of the last four years, forci Read More

Those well-paid state troopers

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • August 22, 2011
  • Blog

New York has the second highest-paid state police force in the country, the Gannett News Service (GNS) last week, based on both state payroll and U.S. Census records.  GNS said the average salary for all ranks of state trooper came to $112,000 as o Read More

DiNapoli: State fiscal margin “tight”

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • August 18, 2011
  • Blog

New York State's tax collections and other receipts during the first four months of the 2011-12 fiscal year were $330 million below projections, according to the July issued yesterday by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.  That dip, he noted, "largely ev Read More

CSEA deal a useful precedent

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • August 16, 2011
  • Blog

Yesterday's by Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) will help Gov. Cuomo reach his workforce savings targets in a tightly balanced state budget.  Almost as important, Cuomo's with the largest state government union -- including a three-year Read More

NY’s double-dip risk

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • August 15, 2011
  • Blog

“If the plodding national economy stumbles into another recession, New York — plagued by high unemployment and the prospect of a rising tide of layoffs on Wall Street — probably will take a tumble, too.” That’s the main takeaway from an article in today’s New York Times on the outlook for the city’s economy — which, of course, has inevitable implications for all of the Empire State. Read More

The Port Authority’s bridge and tunnel alibi

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • August 12, 2011
  • Blog

Declining bridge and tunnel traffic is one of the factors cited by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as justification for its proposed toll and fare increase, which has met with a predictable reaction from Governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie. But a closer look at the PA’s original traffic projections suggest they may have been inflated to start with. Read More