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

Court chalks up one for taxpayers

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • February 19, 2014
  • Blog

Anyone with a “permanent place of abode” in New York is required by law to pay income taxes to the state — and to New York City, as well, if the “abode” is there. But if you’re an out-of-state resident who sets up and maintains a rent-free home for your parents in New York, does that make you a New York resident, too? Read More

“Tonight”: your tax dollars at play

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • February 17, 2014
  • Blog

An article in The New York Times today touts NBC’s “significant investment” in a state-of-the-art studio at 30 Rockefeller Center for “Tonight” and its new host, Jimmy Fallon. But the article never mentions who’s footing a chunk of the bill for Tonight’s move back to New York from California: the taxpayers of New York State. Read More

Is closing state psych centers a good idea?

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • February 14, 2014
  • Blog

Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing the broadest and most concerted facility downsizing effort by any New York governor in recent history, as noted here last summer. In addition to prison closures and consolidations, the governor has proposed shutting down nine psychiatric centers for the acutely mentally ill, consolidating a new institutional network of “Regional Centers of Excellence,” and shifting more of the Office of Mental Health (OMH) budget to”community-based” services. Read More

Teacher pension costs rise again

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • February 6, 2014
  • Blog

The New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS) has officially confirmedpretty much what it predicted last fall: the taxpayer-financed pension contribution rate payable in the fall of 2015 will rise to 17.53 percent of teacher payrolls, or 1.28 percent above the contribution payable this coming September. Read More

Your fuel tax dollars NOT at work

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • February 5, 2014
  • Blog

Under the 2014 enacted budget, capital expenditures on highways and bridges were projected to total $19.742 billion by 2018. But under Cuomo’s latest budget proposal, the five-year total would come to $19,462, a decrease of $280 million from what was projected just a few months ago. Read More

New York’s deadly death tax

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • New York Daily News
  • February 24, 2014
  • Commentary

Gov. Cuomo is proposing the most significant reform and reduction of New York’s estate tax in 17 years. This is a big reason why public employee unions and their allied advocacy groups are now claiming that Cuomo’s tax agenda favors “millionaires and billionaires.” Read More

The ‘death tax’ hurts state’s edge

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • Times Union
  • February 24, 2014
  • Commentary

New York is now one of only 14 states still imposing any tax on estates — the cash, land, houses, financial assets and other property left by deceased residents. The state estate tax, also called the "death tax," is triggered once assets exceed $1 million. By contrast, the federal government only taxes estates worth more than $5.34 million, a figure that will rise with inflation every year. Read More