Ken Girardin

Director of Research

Ken Girardin is the Director of Research at the Empire Center, where his work focuses on organized labor’s effect and influence on state and local government policy.

Ken worked with E.J. McMahon to produce the first independent analysis of New York’s property tax cap, which demonstrated the cap’s effectiveness and boosted efforts to extend the cap and ultimately make it permanent. He also authored The Janus Stakes, a quantitative analysis of the influence New York’s public-sector unions have over public policy in the Empire State.

Ken has a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. He previously worked in the New York State Legislature.

Latest Work

New York in 2022 told school districts they’d be barred from purchasing gasoline- or diesel-powered buses after 2027, and instead have to buy electric buses at more than double the upfront cost. “The purchase of new electric buses will help grow the market,” officials later pledged, “which will in turn help reduce prices.” Unfortunately for taxpayers, those reductions aren’t materializing—because state officials put the prices, and future increases, on cruise control. Read More

Governor Hochul is hammering an “affordability” theme in the leadup to Tuesday's 2025 State of the State address. But her campaign, dubbed "Money In Your Pockets," has so far featured little that would reduce the cost of providing, and therefore buying, goods or services in New York. Instead, the biggest announced and expected elements reflect Albany's waning interest in growing the state economy—and a greater appetite to redistribute what it produces. Read More

Governor Hochul on Saturday signed an innocuous-sounding bill to “regulate the use of automated decision-making systems and artificial intelligence techniques by state agencies.” But the “Legislative Oversight of Automated Decision-making in Government,” or LOADinG Act, wasn’t about protecting New York from self-aware computers trying to wipe out humanity. Instead, it was an early Christmas present for the state's public employee unions—and a lump of coal for New Yorkers hoping for more efficient state government. Read More

Public employee unions complained loudly when New York's state government workforce shrank during the coronavirus pandemic, using that decrease as pretext to press Governor Hochul and state lawmakers for more hiring and costly giveaways to benefit their members. But the latest data show nearly every state agency has more employees than it did a year ago, and that by at least one key measure, the state workforce is larger than it was before COVID. Read More

The New York State Education Department has released data showing outcomes from New York’s 2024 state assessment tests, taken by students in grades 3 to 8 last spring. This is the third year in a row that state education officials have failed to release the data until well into the next school year. Read More