Having decided against running for president in 2008, Governor Pataki is looking to capitalize on his reputation as a green leader by starting an environmental consulting company with his former chief of staff. The company is already working for one of New York City’s largest developers.

Taking a cue from Mayor Giuliani who converted his post-September 11 fame into a lucrative security and management consulting business, Mr. Pataki, in a partnership with his longtime aide, John Cahill, will soon officially announce the launch of the Pataki-Cahill Group.

“Rudy did it with security, and the governor and John are doing it with environmental issues,” a source close to Mr. Pataki said.
“The governor … has always had as his no. 1 interest the environment,” William Plunkett, Mr. Pataki’s former law partner and Mr. Cahill’s legal mentor, said in an interview. “It’s a smart move for the governor, and it’s a smart move for anybody who hires him.”

The company will be based in the Manhattan office of the law firm Chadbourne and Parke, where Messrs. Pataki & Cahill have worked as counsels since March. Mr. Pataki has recruited a handful of other former administration officials to his venture, according to the source.

While the business plan of Mr. Pataki’s company is not known, the opportunities for the former governor to make money from the surging environmental industry are ample.

Mr. Pataki could, for example, advise companies on selling their land to state governments; help foreign governments such as China craft stricter environmental regulations, or consult with companies on how to lower their energy costs with the help of state aid.

One of the former governor’s first clients is Related WestPac, an operating unit of the Related Companies, a development company headed by Stephen Ross responsible for a variety of multibillion-dollar projects, including the Time Warner Center and part of the planned Moynihan Station. It is also said to be preparing a bid for the West Side rail yards.

Earlier this month, Mr. Pataki flew to Snowmass, Colo., where Related is constructing a $2 billion, 80-acre ski village. Pataki-Cahill has been providing environmental advice to the firm, which announced plans to install a microturbine for generating electricity and whose contractors are being encouraged to use bio-diesel machinery.

“In the weeks to come, you will hear a lot more from the Pataki-Cahill Group, but until then let it suffice to say that it will allow two of America’s leaders on environmental and energy issues to remain involved in the issues they care deeply about,” a spokesman for Mr. Pataki, David Catalfamo, said by e-mail.

Mr. Pataki has long viewed himself as an environmentalist. In the twilight of his governorship, it was to his record on green issues that he pointed most often when he recapped his legacy. During his 12-year tenure, the state bought and preserved more than 1 million acres of land, a larger surface area than the state of Rhode Island.

The Pataki administration pushed through the Legislature tax incentives for renewable fuel manufacturers and established a tax credit program for the development of so-called high-rise green buildings.

The New York Times, however, noted in an article in 2005 that Mr. Pataki’s confident rhetoric about protecting the environment occasionally didn’t match results. Critics said the governor weakened the enforcement capabilities of the Department of Environmental Conservation by reducing its staff. This year, the Spitzer administration charged that legislation Mr. Pataki signed intending to encourage developers to clean up brownfields ended up enriching businesses more than it recovered land.

While the former governor has not announced the formation of the company, Mr. Pataki talked about his consulting group in an interview this week with the New York Law Journal.

“I have John Cahill with me, and some others who are working, not directly for Chadbourne, but helping Chadbourne as we build the Pataki-Cahill Group, too,” Mr. Pataki said. “At the consulting group we will be doing the same thing, focusing in the two areas of clean energy and environmental issues and in the area of P-3, rebuilding or expanding infrastructure with public-private partnerships. It’s separate but associated with Chadbourne.

“The whole environmental field is one where the intersection of the law, the private practice of the law and the interest of private companies in government regulators and oversight overlaps,” Mr. Pataki said.

In the interview, the governor declined to comment on his opinion of the Spitzer administration’s first year but provided an update on the career paths of his children. His son, Teddy, is a first lieutenant in the Marines, leading a platoon in the Anbar province in Iraq. A daughter, Emily, is working at the Manhattan law firm White and Case, and another, Allison, who graduated from Yale University this year, will be working for ABC News, Mr. Pataki said.