Edmund J. McMahon is director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a project of the Manhattan Institute. He also is senior fellow for Tax and Budgetary Studies at the Institute’s Center for Civic Innovation.

McMahon focuses on state, city and local issues, recommending policy changes and reforms to increase economic growth. His recent work has included studies focused on public pension reform, competitive contracting of public services, and the fiscal record of the Pataki administration. His articles have appeared in 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 New York Sun, among other publications.

McMahon’s professional background includes more than 25 years as an Albany-based policy analyst and close observer of New York State government, working in both the private and public sectors.

He has served as Deputy Commissioner for Tax Policy Analysis and Counselor to the Commissioner in the state Department of Taxation and Finance; Director of Minority Staff for the state Assembly Ways and Means Committee; Vice Chancellor for External Relations at the State University of New York; and Director of Research for the Public Policy Institute, research arm of The Business Council of New York State. Earlier in his career, he was a staff writer and columnist for newspapers including the Albany Times Union and The Knickerbocker News. McMahon is a graduate of Villanova University.

Nicole Gelinas is the Searle Freedom Trust Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Gelinas writes on urban economics and finance, municipal and corporate finance, business issues, and crime. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and a member of the New York Society of Securities Analysts.

Gelinas has published analysis and opinion pieces on the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union Tribune, the New York Sun, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the Dallas Morning News, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the Boston Herald. She has also written for Crain’s New York Business and National Review Online.

Before coming to City Journal, Gelinas was a business journalist for Thomson Financial in New York, where she covered the international syndicated-loan and private-debt markets. She also wrote a regular op-ed column for the New York Post.