Governor Pataki’s hopes of breaking ground on Moynihan Station before he leaves office are being derailed by Albany Democrats.

The $900 million project to remake the Farley Post Office building on Eighth Avenue between 31st and 33rd streets into a Grand Central-like transit hub took another blow yesterday when the governor pulled it from the agenda of the Public Authorities Control Board in the final moments before a vote, a signal that he was not confident it would pass.

Although the project has been in the works for about eight years, yesterday state comptroller Alan Hevesi and the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, said there are several outstanding financial questions and information gaps in Mr. Pataki’s plan. As a member of the Public Authorities Control Board, Mr. Silver must give his approval for the project to move forward.

Mr. Silver said yesterday that his objection is related to the project details and not the concept.

“I am hopeful that in the coming weeks the administration will acknowledge and address the many areas of concern expressed by the Assembly and the comptroller and put together a plan that is sound, thorough and deserving of support,” Mr. Silver said in a statement.

Last month, Mr. Hevesi sent the state’s development agency a list of concerns about the project, which led to a postponement of an August vote by the PACB. Ahead of yesterday’s scheduled vote, Mr. Hevesi publicized another letter that said the state’s recent explanations raised more questions than they answered.

Among the questions raised in Mr. Hevesi’s letter are the operational costs of the completed facility, the conveyance of the development rights over the Farley Post Office building, outstanding federal approvals, and the potential for the developer to change the design after final approval.

A statement yesterday from the state’s leading development official, Charles Gargano, said he expects the project to be approved in the “coming days.” Mr. Gargano appeared to take aim at Mr. Hevesi for waiting until the last moment to publicize his concerns.

“We have provided answers to those questions (text attached), and continue to be available to answer any questions at any time, as we have for the past several months,” he said.

The Moynihan Station project seemed to be sailing towards approval until the state’s selected developers, the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust, introduced a more ambitious plan to move Madison Square Garden from its current location over Penn Station into the west side of the Farley complex.

The move would allow the existing Penn Station, the busiest transit hub in the United States, to be expanded and opened up to daylight, a superior option, according to several elected officials and civic organizations.

The bigger plan created a divide in the development community between those who want to move ahead with Moynihan Station as soon as possible, and those who want to wait for a more comprehensive plan that includes the Garden move.

Development sources say that the final approval of Moynihan Station is also caught up in partisan politics. The Pataki administration has been candid about its desire to complete the project forward before the governor leaves office at the end of the year. Democrats, some sources say, could be stalling with the hope that the front-runner to be the next governor, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, will soon take control over the plan.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat and an outspoken critic of the Pataki administration’s development team, said that the latest plan “isn’t close” to final approval. He compared Moynihan Station to the state’s plan to expand the Javits Convention Center. Both projects, he said, have suffered from neglect because of Mr. Pataki’s desire for groundbreakings before leaving office in January.

“In their attempt to jam these projects through before the end of the year, they are endangering them,” Mr. Brodsky said. “They came up with half-baked proposal for a good idea, and they expect of people to go on board.”

A spokesman for the Regional Plan Association, a planning group that has advocated for a Moynihan Station, Jeremy Soffin, said that yesterday’s nonvote was likely driven by legitimate questions about the project, and not a sign of dwindling support or political jockeying. He said that several important aspects of the project plan, as put together by the Pataki administration, were not resolved.

“I don’t know why it hasn’t been dealt with already,” Mr. Soffin said.

The president of the Municipal Art Society, Kent Barwick, said that the real choice facing elected officials was whether to wait a year or more for a wider plan that would include the Garden move, or to move ahead with the Moynihan Station part of the plan, which, he said, was bound to be part of the larger plan.

“What I don’t know is what level of documentation that the PACB typically requires in a project that it approves,” Mr. Barwick said. “Is this good government diligence, or it there something else going on here?”