Three key charter school officials have resigned during the past month even as Governor Spitzer has repeatedly promised that lifting the state cap on the schools is a priority for his administration this year.

The directors of two of the agencies that review charter school applications, the SUNY Charter Schools Institute and the city Department of Education charter school office, stepped down in December. This week, the president of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, a nonprofit organization that guides charter schools through the charter application process, Paula Gavin, announced that she would be stepping down in April.

The exodus comes at an odd time: Designers of more than 80 charter school proposals are waiting expectantly for Mr. Spitzer to move forward on campaign promises to lift the state charter school cap, which he restated in his State of the State address this month but has yet to act on.

“It seems a little strange — there’s nobody there,” a schools operation consultant for New Visions, an education reform organization that helps open small schools in New York, Peter Goodman, said of the charter school agencies.

“They’re starting at an enormous disadvantage,” he added, referring to the two schools slated to open next year in the city under the existing cap and 80 others that would begin the application process if the cap were lifted.

The 80 groups that have expressed interest in developing charter schools in the city, including five that have already been authorized and 12 that have submitted proposals for their schools, have been frozen in a gestation stage for the past several years by the cap. Charter school advocates say that despite Mr. Spitzer’s assurances, a thaw has not yet begun. “People’s hopes have been dashed before,” the vice president of the New York Charter School Resource Center, Peter Murphy, said. “There were several moments in the past 12 months where people’s hopes went up, but … it didn’t happen.”

Mr. Murphy denied, however, that the exodus of charter school officials was due to a fear that Mr. Spitzer will be unable to overcome opposition to charter schools in the state Assembly that thwarted Governor Pataki’s repeated efforts to lift the cap.

“I think it’s no different than the ebb and flow of people moving jobs,” he said. “I don’t think it’s more complicated than that.”

A spokeswoman for the city education department, Melody Meyer, said there is currently no search to replace the former chief executive officer of the agency’s charter school office, Mashea Ashton, who left to join the nonprofit principal training academy, New Leaders for New Schools. While the department does not have the power to authorize charters, it reviews all applications for schools wishing to open in the city and recommends them to the state Board of Regents for authorization.

Ms. Meyer said the charter school office, which operates under the Office of New Schools, was functioning normally without a leader. She also said the department had no plans to shut down the office.

“As long as there are charter schools in New York City, the Department of Education will continue to monitor and oversee charter schools, as well as provide operational support,” she said.

The executive director of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, one of the two state agencies with the power to grant charters, James Merriman, said he left to follow his wife, a fashion designer, to a job in Ohio. He also denied there was a connection in the rash of resignations.

Mr. Merriman is now working for the Walton Family Foundation, which gives grants to charter schools, and a senior vice president, Jennifer Sneed, is in charge while the institute searches for a replacement.

A couple of charter school groups, including St. Hope, a Sacramento-based nonprofit organization founded by a former National Basketball Association player, Kevin Johnson, are looking at alternatives if the cap isn’t lifted, including starting a school under the chancellor’s small school initiative, according to the education department.

Other charter school designers are still hopeful, despite years of waiting.

A would-be founder of the Lower East Side Charter School for Leadership Excellence, Ninfa Segarra, has waited for the cap to be lifted for three years, during which time her school lost its lease on a building and had to stall the search for teachers and a principal. She said she has looked on the bright side, in that her group found better building options and new candidates for the jobs.

“We’ve been fortunate that we have been able to stay together,” she said, referring to other charter school groups that have disbanded after being stymied by the cap. “This delay was not anything we could foresee, so it made it even more difficult, but that’s for the benefit of the kids.”