ALBANY - The owlish, quiet man in glasses who speaks in a low, almost inaudible monotone is easy to overlook. But in New York's power politics, he's impossible to ignore.

This week, New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is being blamed for derailing the nation's most visible pilot of a plan that would limit urban traffic and reduce choking air pollution for generations. He wouldn't even bring the issue of a traffic congestion fee to a floor vote, citing what he said was overwhelming opposition by his Democratic members, led by those from the outer boroughs and suburbs.

It was another defeat delivered by the Democrat over the Republican-led Senate, the new Democratic governor, and billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg. And it was widely viewed as symbolic of a spineless state Legislature that operates behind closed doors and cedes all its power to just three men, including Silver.

Bloomberg, the independent nonpartisan mayor known for holding back public political vitriol, had a hard time with this latest loss to Silver.

“It takes courage to ask people to change,” Bloomberg said. Bloomberg tried to deflect reporters' questions on whether Silver should be blamed directly, then added: “I do not think that any one person should decide what is right.”

Meet Shelly Silver: One of the three most powerful men in New York state politics; lower Manhattan rainmaker, trial lawyer, and perhaps the most inscrutable and criticized member of a state Legislature that is easy to hate.

He's the quintessential Manhattan trial lawyer in pinstripes; yet he spends summers in his home in the Catskill Mountains where he's an avid golfer.

At 64, he's small and bookish; yet he was a basketball star at Yeshiva University and holds New York Rangers season tickets.

He's an orthodox Jew, a modern Tevia-like character, who won't violate the Sabbath even for pressing state business, but who was also questioned in an investigation of lobbyists for his Las Vegas casino trip.

He deals in billions of dollars in the state budget, and was singled out Wednesday by Billy Easton of the Alliance for Quality Education for being the key to a record increase in school aid approved Wednesday. “I would call him a master negotiator,” Easton said.

Silver has also personally directed tens of millions of dollars in pork-barrel spending to the district he represented since 1976, and - rumor has it - represents several bold face names in a lucrative law practice he scrupulously keeps secret under attorney-client protections.

Yet he resoles the toes and heels of his shoes to make them last, and keeps a beat-up pair for wet weather in the trunk of the older model sedan he drives himself.

Perhaps his most notable physical feature: Silver has the thickest of skins, seeming to the point of uncaring that he's routinely seen as an obstructionist. While he has many allies, few call him a close friend.

He's not known as a great orator, but he delivered Albany's most impassioned speech immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, speaking of the view from his apartment window that overlooked what would forever be called ground zero.

Unlike most political leaders who form deep alliances, Silver's position on issues is usually hard to predict and his the last perspective known. He's blocked the Senate's Republican majority repeatedly and, days later, sided with GOP senators to override hundreds of vetoes by former Republican Gov. George Pataki. Silver has also rebuked former Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer, most notably in choosing a new comptroller.

Polls show few New Yorkers know Silver, even though he has led the Assembly since 1994 and was the driving force behind such major initiatives as universal pre-Kindergarten, tax-break zones for employers, the revival of lower Manhattan after Sept. 11, and a nanotech research center in Albany. But polls also show that most of those who do know him, don't like him.

“I certainly wouldn't consider him a friend, and he wouldn't consider me one, but I've known him since the mid-'80s,” said Steven Greenberg, a former spokesman for Democrats. He respects Silver as smart and savvy.

Silver's opponents blame him for elimination of a commuter tax that could have brought the city $5 billion and counting since 1999.

He's also blamed for the loss of the 2012 Olympics by opposing a huge development plan for Manhattan's west side that would have included a stadium for the New York Jets.

The New York Daily News on Wednesday derisively called this graveyard of opportunity “Shell's Kitchen.”

Silver's opposite number, Republican Senate leader Joseph Bruno from upstate, has long had a tolerate-hate relationship with the Manhattanite. In thorny legislative and budget negotiations, Bruno says Silver just crosses his arms, sits back, and waits. And waits.

Usually, it works.

“He's got great timing,” said Democratic Assemblyman Richard Brodsky of Westchester. “He sits and waits for things to come to him. Most people don't have that kind of patience.”