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

Where Gotham’s money comes from

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • March 29, 2016
  • Blog

While legislative leaders and Governor Cuomo were cooking their latest backroom state budget deal, the New York City Independent Budget Office was issuing five years' worth of updated statistics showing how heavily the city already depends on the volatile earnings of taxpayers at the top of the income pyramid. Read More

Upstate job growth weak—again

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • March 24, 2016
  • Blog

Employment growth in most upstate New York regions remained weak during the year ending in February, according to the latest monthly state Department of Labor jobs report. Read More

Cuomo extends costly arbitration law

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • March 23, 2016
  • Blog

Three years ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo blew a rare opportunity to fundamentally reform one of the most costly provisions of the New York State law regulating public-sector collective bargaining. Now he's about to blow it again. Read More

Senate mugs NYC on cop pensions

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • March 18, 2016
  • Blog

Buried in the budget bill passed by the state Senate last week was a provision that would add billions more dollars to New York City's already sizable long-term pension liabilities. The provision in question would increase disability retirement benefits for city police officers hired since 2009—and, by extension, also for city firefighters and members of other uniformed services. Read More

Thruway toll credit crashes

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • March 16, 2016
  • Blog

In their budget bills, state Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans both had the good sense to reject one of the most egregious fiscal-political gimmicks ever to emerge from Governor Andrew Cuomo: a temporary income tax credit that would have reimbursed a portion of Thruway tolls paid by New York State residents and businesses. Read More

NY job growth slows down sharply

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • March 7, 2016
  • Blog

Statewide private sector employment in New York as of December was up just 1 percent over the same month a year earlier—less than half the national rate, and the lowest such growth rate in New York since the end of the recession in 2009, according to revised employment data released last week by the state Labor Department (DOL). The total year-to-year gain of just 76,500 private jobs was less than half the average recorded in each of the four previous Decembers since Governor Andrew Cuomo took office. Read More

Unsavory roots of the minimum wage

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • March 1, 2016
  • Blog

In his push for a statewide $15-an-hour minimum wage, Governor Andrew Cuomo frequently invokes fairness, justice and the rhetoric of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But the pre-FDR Progressive Era advocates of the minimum wage had a worldview that today would fit in best at a Donald Trump rally. Read More