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

In what amounts to an unlegislated state tax hike, New York's already-high electricity rates are poised to go even higher. That’s because, essentially at Gov. Cuomo’s order, the state Public Service Commission will require electric utilities to both subsidize money-losing upstate nuclear plants and buy power from “renewable” energy sources, mainly solar and wind-generated. Read More

START-UP NY, New York’s signature economic development program, made headlines for creating just 408 jobs in its first two years of operations. However, bigger disappointments may lie ahead. Read More

Some of New York State’s major transportation infrastructure projects are now benefiting from expanded use of the design-build process—but a costly pro-union rider has been attached to proposed legislation extending design-build authorization to public works financed by New York City, and could set a troubling precedent. Read More

With just three work days remaining in the legislative session, a number of bills that would loosen the property-tax cap await consideration in both houses. The pending legislative efforts range from small modifications to the cap formula to allow more spending without triggering the cap’s supermajority requirement, to doing away with the supermajority requirement altogether. Read More