The transportation-funding bill, sponsored by State Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.), would raise gas taxes, increase motorists' fees, and levy a tax on oil companies' profits.
It would provide about $1.3 billion a year for highways, bridges, and mass-transit projects.
Gov. Rendell called the legislature into special session this year to try to fill a gap of nearly $500 million in the state's transportation budget.
"I recognize how difficult times are, and I don't take lightly the element of taxes . . . but this needs to be addressed, and it has to start now," Evans said Thursday. A failure to act by year's end could mean losing the 2011 construction season, he said.
Evans, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said he will hold hearings on the bill Monday, hoping to get it through both houses of the legislature before lawmakers go home in November.
But leaders of the Republican-controlled Senate said they doubted there was enough time to consider the measure this year.
"We are deeply skeptical that there is time to build the necessary consensus in the legislature - let alone the public - on a large transportation-funding plan this year," said Erik Arneson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware).
The bill would increase the oil company franchise tax by the equivalent of 6.5 cents a gallon at the gas pump, impose an 8 percent tax on the gross profits of oil companies in Pennsylvania, and increase various motorist fees.
The strike-warning provision would impose fines and possible jail terms on union leaders and members who violated the 72-hour requirement.
