ALBANY — A special three-person state panel charged with screening applicants for state comptroller announced yesterday evening that it is recommending for the job three candidates: Mayor Bloomberg’s finance commissioner, a financier who is close a friend of Governor Spitzer’s, and the comptroller of Nassau County.

The panel, comprising two former state comptrollers and a former city comptroller, defied widespread expectations that it would pick five candidates and recommend at least one member of the Democrat-controlled Assembly. The three candidates making the cut are: Martha Stark, the first African-American woman to serve as New York City’s Finance Commissioner; William Mulrow, an Ivy League-educated Democratic activist and Wall Street expert who is close to Mr. Spitzer, and Howard Weitzman, who as Nassau’s top fiscal official had a hand in the county’s recent financial turnaround. The panel’s surprise choice appeared to be a heavy blow to the Democratic speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, and threw into doubt whether Mr. Silver would abide by its recommendations. Mr. Silver, the governor, and the Republican majority leader, Joseph Bruno, agreed to establish a special screening panel after Mr. Spitzer pushed to have more influence over the process.

Instead, the members of the panel, Carl McCall and Ned Regan, the former state comptrollers, and Harrison Goldin, a former city comptroller, passed over the Assembly and limited its choices to three high-profile candidates among a crowded field of 18 contenders looking to succeed Alan Hevesi, the Democratic incumbent who resigned in December after pleading guilty to a felony charge of defrauding the government.

“After careful consideration of all the candidates and a review of their backgrounds, experience and credentials, we have concluded that Messrs. Mulrow and Weitzman and Ms. Stark are all qualified to be State Comptroller,” Messrs. Goldin, McCall, and Regan said in a statement.

The timing of Mr. Hevesi’s departure means that the next comptroller, who will oversee the states $145.7 billion pension fund, audit state agencies, and review the budget, will serve almost a full four-year term.

Five members of the Assembly have put their hat in the ring — although one lawmaker, Alexander “Pete” Grannis, was taken out of contention after Mr. Spitzer nominated him to be commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation. The other four are Thomas DiNapoli of Nassau County, Joseph Morelle of Rochester, Richard Brodsky of Westchester, and Felix Ortiz of Brooklyn.

Mr. Silver, whose control over the 107 Democratic members of the Assembly would seem to give him the final word in a selection process that concludes with a joint-session vote, had said repeatedly that he preferred the next comptroller to be an Assembly member. His position put him at odds with Mr. Spitzer, whose aides have suggested that the governor favors the job going to a financial expert outside of the Legislature.

“The process established was intended to result in five candidates being recommended to the Legislature for its consideration,” Mr. Silver said in a statement last night. “Unfortunately, the panel’s decision did not conform to the process and the charge given to them. We will review this matter to determine how we will proceed with Governor Spitzer, senator Bruno, and the members of the Legislature shortly.”

Mr. Silver, one of the shrewdest politicians in Albany, appears to be painted into a corner. If he turns his back on the recommendations, he could be setting himself up for criticism that he is a breaking a promise to the governor and violating a spirit of reform that is vogue in Albany these days. If he restricts himself to the three candidates, he could risk alienating members of the Assembly.

Even before the candidates were announced, Mr. Silver was giving indication that he did not believe he was bound to the panel’s selections. “What if they send us just one or two candidates?” Mr. Silver told the Associated Press. “They can give me whatever they want. We don’t have to pick one of them. There is no statute here.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Spitzer said the governor would be reviewing the candidates.

While Mr. Silver holds a veto-proof majority in the Assembly, his voting bloc of Democrats is just a sliver more than the majority that he needs to control a two-house comptroller vote, a fact that was noted by a veteran Albany observer last night.

With this week’s death of a Democratic Staten Island assemblyman, John Lavelle, and the nomination of Mr. Grannis, Mr. Silver’s bloc could shrink to a sub-majority level of 106, depending on when Mr. Grannis leaves his seat and takes the job in the Spitzer administration.

The three candidates chosen by the panel were among the best known in the field. As Mr. Bloomberg ‘s finance commissioner, Ms. Stark has been in charge of a 2,300-person agency that annually collects $18 billion in tax revenue. She took over the job just at the time when several of the agency’s tax assessors were accused of defrauding the city of more than $100 million. In her position, she has sought to modernize the tax assessment equipment and review the city’s tax system. A native of Brownsville, Ms. Stark received her bachelor’s and law degrees from New York University.

Mr. Mulrow, a Westchester resident who is also close to many of the city’s labor leaders, is a director of Citigroup Global Capital Markets. He previously worked at Gabelli Asset Management, a company that came under federal scrutiny after it acknowledged that it permitted a client to engage in short-term trading. Mr. Mulrow said the funds he managed had nothing to do with the funds looked at by the SEC.