ALBANY — Legislative pay raises were supposed to be Governor Pataki’s trump card in his final high-stakes matchup against the Democratic speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver. For the governor, it was leverage to cash in big going-away prizes: a civil confinement bill, an expansion of charter schools, and an agreement to break ground on his signature development project, Moynihan Station.

As it turned out, Mr. Silver and his fellow lawmakers, who seemed to indicate that they would do anything for their first pay raise in eight years, refused to play along. Mr. Silver, the canniest negotiator in the Capitol building, during Wednesday’s special session decided to give nothing and take nothing.

Although a deal technically could be worked out up until December 31 — “never say never” is the motto here — it appears that Mr. Silver has foiled Mr. Pataki’s effort to leave Albany with a bang and put some momentum behind his tentative plans to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

Yesterday, in one of his last Red Room press conferences with reporters, a frustrated Mr. Pataki hewed to the issue of civil confinement, focusing attention on one small piece of what appears to be a broader policy defeat.

Mr. Pataki lost the battle over civil confinement, but he also lost on charter schools, an ambitious experiment in education that the governor brought to New York but failed to see prosper. Barring a last-minute change of heart by Mr. Silver, Mr. Pataki also appears to have lost his effort to resuscitate his $900 million plan to convert the landmark Farley Post Office into Moynihan Train Station. Mr. Silver isn’t likely to agree to put the plan on the agenda of the powerful Public Authorities Control Board, which is scheduled to meet Wednesday.

While Mr. Silver was under considerable pressure to come through with a Christmas present for his conference members, especially after the City Council voted itself a hefty raise, the speaker came to the bargaining table with his own trump card. Unlike Mr. Pataki, he had time on his side.

By waiting, Mr. Silver can hope to land a better deal with Governor-elect Spitzer, who signaled Wednesday that his stance against pay raises isn’t as rigid as he previously indicated, saying he might be amenable to a system that would establish a permanent mechanism for increasing salaries of lawmakers, judges, and commissioners.

“He had a contingency plan that was brilliant,” the incoming leader of the Democratic conference of the Senate, Malcolm Smith, said. “The plan was Eliot.”

By holding out, Mr. Silver also conserves the leverage that he will need next year in talks with Mr. Spitzer, a politician who is popular among New Yorkers and has promised to use his Election Day mandate to shake up how Mr. Silver and the rest of Albany does business. Mr. Spitzer supports an expansion of charter schools and a civil confinement bill for locking up violent sexual offenders, but he’ll need Mr. Silver’s cooperation on both issues. His leverage will also extend to his dealings with Mayor Bloomberg, whose city lobbyists pushed hard for a charter school bill this session, as time is running out to get permission to open approved charter schools for the 2007-08 academic year.

Asked about the charter school issue, Mr. Pataki had a word of warning for charter school advocates, who may be heartened by Mr. Spitzer’s past remarks favoring increasing the independent schools beyond the statewide legal limit of 100. Mr. Silver, the governor admonished, will have a better opportunity next year to tailor a charter school bill more to his liking. “Let me make a prediction,” he said. “They will raise the number next year, but they will gut the bill by giving the special interest groups a lot more control over how those charter schools are run.”

Mr. Pataki’s signature education policy is now in the hands of a Democratic governor who supports charter schools but has yet to show a willingness to cross the teachers unions, which stand opposed to expanding charter schools unless more of them are unionized.

The governor speculated that Mr. Silver would demand a charter school bill that would replace secret ballots in union elections with a card check system that critics say would submit teachers to peer pressure. Such measures, Mr. Pataki said, would “weaken the ability of schools to operate effectively.” Mr. Spitzer has not taken a position on whether he supports a card check system for union elections. A spokeswoman for the governor-elect did not respond yesterday to an inquiry.

Mr. Silver told reporters yesterday that negotiations over charter schools figured much more prominently in Wednesday’s special session talks than Mr. Pataki suggested they had. Mr. Pataki apparently demanded that Democrats accept lifting the statewide cap on the schools to 300 from 100, a proposal dismissed by Mr. Silver, who said he is concerned about the financial impact the schools could have on districts.

For as long as people can remember, the relationship between Messrs. Silver and Pataki has been one of recrimination, finger-pointing, and frustration, adding a human dimension to the broader dysfunction of Albany politics.

Yesterday, Mr. Pataki sounded a final bitter note, accusing Mr. Silver of negotiating in bad faith and irresponsibly making it more difficult for the state to lock up the most dangerous brand of criminals. He said he would have been content with an agreement on just civil confinement, but Mr. Silver never expressed any interest.

“Until this bill becomes law … there will be violent acts committed by sexual predators who had this law passed would have been civilly confined and not out on the street,” Mr. Pataki said. “The only reason this is not the law is because the speaker would not allow it on the floor for a vote.”

Mr. Silver, speaking to reporters later in the day, said he was confident that not a single sex offender locked up under Mr. Pataki’s system would be sprung from civil confinement in the next six months. He said he plans to hammer out a civil confinement agreement with the next governor.