Ken Girardin

Special Advisor

Ken Girardin is a special advisor to the Empire Center, following several years of work guiding the organization’s research agenda and communications strategy. He joined the Manhattan Institute as a fellow in March 2025.

Ken’s work for the Empire Center included The Micron Test, which compared how New York treats large new business operations with those already here, and Green Guardrails, a critical analysis of New York’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

He previously 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 was previously an aide in the New York State Legislature.

Latest Work

Governor’s Next Giveaway to NY’s Public Unions?

When Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently signed a bill making it harder for government workers to escape labor unions, he said it was just “the first step of the resistance.” Translation: It wasn’t the last favor Cuomo hopes to do for New York’s powerful public-sector unions in anticipation of the coming US Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME, which could void state laws compelling government workers to pay dues-like agency fees to unions they choose not to join. Read More

Cuomo’s next union giveaway

When Governor Andrew Cuomo recently signed a bill making it harder for government workers to extricate themselves from labor unions, he said it was just “the first step of the resistance.” So, what will New York’s governor and lawmakers seek to do next for their public-sector union friends? Read More

Unions top lobbying list

New York's government unions collectively spent more on lobbying last year than the state's biggest trial lawyers, landlord, tobacco and hospital interests combined. And topping the list, as usual, was New York’s powerful conglomerate of public education unions. Read More

The budget’s big gift to unions

Buried in the state budget bills rushing towards passage under cover of Passover, Good Friday evening and the coming Easter holiday is the top item on the New York government unions’ wish list—a provision designed to trap public employees into paying union dues. Read More

The return of Hotel California

For a second consecutive year, the state Assembly is poised to pass a union-backed bill that would make it harder for New York government employees to opt out of union membership. This time, at least, it may be debated first. Read More

Senate seeks costly “discussion”

The state Senate’s ruling majority coalition hopes state budget talks will include a “discussion about whether the definition of public work should be updated”—shorthand for whether costly union compensation packages should be imposed on a much larger number of projects subsidized directly or indirectly by taxpayers. Read More