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

You’ve got to hand it to New York State United Teachers: the union maintains a remarkably straight face while arguing that the nation’s highest-spending schools and best-paid teachers are starved for funding. Read More

Amid Albany’s Medicaid over-spending crisis, the state Health Department is reconfiguring a little-known portion of the deficit-ridden program in what looks like a scheme to squeeze union dues from roughly 110,000 Medicaid-subsidized in-home caregivers. Read More

Governor Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders have reached a deal allowing striking workers to collect unemployment insurance benefits after three weeks, a big gift to private-sector labor unions that would further discourage companies from hiring and investing here. Read More

A dispute over the construction contract for a stretch of proposed state-funded public walking and biking trail in Central New York shows how far Governor Andrew Cuomo will go to steer state contracts to construction unions—and how much that’s costing taxpayers. Read More

A proposed rule under consideration by the U.S. Department of Labor would have the unexpected benefit of letting more New York public employees see how their union dues are spent—and negating a major union’s recent move to escape federal oversight. Read More