ALBANY – The ashen remains of nearly half the victims of the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack will probably stay buried at a Staten Island landfill despite the protests of family members and a growing coalition of allies in the Legislature, where a bill ordering removal of the remains is stalled.

Roughly 500,000 tons of ash that was culled from ground zero in the months following the terrorist attack were brought to the Fresh Kills landfill and covered with a foot of soil, on which grass now grows. Many of the families of the roughly 1,200 victims whose remains could not be identified have pressed lawmakers to move the remains to another site.

The Bloomberg administration and the speaker of the state Assembly, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat of Manhattan, resisted those efforts last year because some family members insisted the remains be relocated to ground zero. Messrs. Silver and Bloomberg viewed the earlier proposal as an impediment to redevelopment and as representing too grim a landmark for a commercial and residential site.

Lawmakers in the Republican-led Senate drafted a compromise bill this year that did not specify where the remains would be sent. The bill passed the Senate this month under the sponsorship of Thomas Morahan, a Republican of Rockland County. He wrote in a memo attached to the bill that its intent was “to rectify the indignity that families of victims have expressed in having their loved ones buried in a landfill.”

A similar bill in the Democratic-led Assembly has not advanced out of committee, however, prompting its sponsor to stage a small rally outside the state Capitol yesterday, attended by the families of victims. The sponsor, Ryan Karben, a Democrat of Rockland County, urged his Democratic colleagues to press for a vote on the bill in the six days remaining in this year’s legislative session.

“The important thing is to provide each one of these families a place to mourn, and for us as a community to honor our values,” Mr. Karben said. “We honor our dead in this country. We honor our dead when they fall in battle. We honor our civilians when they are the victims of terrorist attacks, and we’re not honoring people by leaving them in a landfill. It’s a betrayal of our values and inconsistent with everything we stand for.”

In an unexpected development, the powerful chairman of the Committee on Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions, Richard Brodsky, suggested yesterday that the bill, as written, allows for the remains of victims to stay at Fresh Kills.

Mr. Brodsky said he has asked the authors of the bill to explain a loophole that he said would allow the remains to be left where they are.

“I’m trying to get an answer now,” Mr. Brodsky said. “We want to do something. I think we’re all committed to the respectful treatment of anything surrounding 9/11, but I’m personally uncomfortable with permitting Fresh Kills landfill to become a memorial site.”

Mr. Karben responded by saying the bill is clear in its intent.

“I think the bill is pretty clear that the remains don’t remain at Fresh Kills,” he said. “That’s the purpose of the legislation.”

As part of his efforts at urging a vote, Mr. Karben obtained the signatures of all 23 members of the corporations committee other than Mr. Brodsky on a letter urging the Westchester Democrat to place the Fresh Kills bill on the committee’s agenda.

A mother of one of the victims whose ashes are in the landfill, Diane Horning, proposed moving the remains to Governor’s Island, in New York Harbor. She also proposed a cemetery similar to the one in Normandy, France, for fallen World War II soldiers.